• Home
• /
• World
• /
• Asia

Sharp fall in demand for engineering seats in Maharashtra

Pune - The fall in demand is evident even in polytechnics.

Pune university will on Saturday decide on requests from many colleges wanting to shut down courses or even the entire institute because of lack of demand from students.

Colleges that have been hit the worst are those offering engineering, MBA and architecture courses. When demand for these courses skyrocketed a few years ago, many private institutions sought the permission of universities in the state and launched programmes. During the initial years, the fees were stiff, but as demand weakened, they were forced to reduce them.

According to the Maharashtra Common Entrance Test cell, 45 per cent of seats in engineering courses for the first year have been vacant. The worst hit are unaided private engineering institutes, which have reported a massive 95 per cent vacancies in seats.

Private institutes accounted for 54,000 of the total 55,000 vacant engineering seats in the state last year. With 50 engineering colleges seeking closure every year, the All India Council for Technical Education stopped giving clearances for new ones from 2020-21.

But demand for engineering courses has witnessed a remarkable decline across India. Over the last five years, nearly 660,000 seats have been done away with and the total number of seats had fallen to 2.4 million. The fall in demand is evident even in polytechnics. Those in Maharashtra have seen a 60 per cent fall in admissions.