BENGALURU: It was a ‘sale’ of undergraduate engineering seats at some of the engineering colleges in the state on Tuesday and Wednesday. As the deadline to complete the admission process for undergraduate engineering courses for the current academic year was set for August 15 by a Supreme Court order, some of the colleges in the state literally put their seats on sale where even seats under management quota were given at the government fees.
According to college managements, it was better to offer seats at lesser price than keeping them vacant. “As Wednesday was the last date for admissions to engineering courses, we decided to offer the vacant seats at the government fee. We had a list of students who had approached us for seats under management quota and did not get through in the beginning. We personally called them and offered the vacant seats at the CET fee,” said a management representative of a private engineering college in the city.
“If we keep those seats, they will go waste, so we gave them away to those in need. Of course, it is a financial burden for the institute. But keeping them vacant would be a bigger burden,” said the principal of an engineering college in city.
In cases where seats were not available in streams some candidates wanted to get into, they took admissions in whatever was available. When asked about it, a student who got such a seat said, “I can change the stream/ combination after one year at the university level. And in the first year, the syllabus is almost the same for all the streams. So, I decided to get into what is available. I will change the same by paying the prescribed fee in the second year.”
As per data available at Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), over 20,000 seats were left vacant under government quota at private colleges, some even in government colleges. This is around 1,000 seats more than they were in the previous year.
Meanwhile, representatives of medical colleges also feel that the same will be the situation for medical and dental seats. “The mop-up round for medical and dental is still pending and we have a feeling that seats under NRI quota are going to be vacant and colleges will have no choice but to offer them at the government fee structure,” said a member of Consortium of Medical Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka.
