CHENNAI: The drop in engineering admissions may leave one-third of engineering colleges in the state fighting for survival in 2020-21. Of 461 colleges that took part in the online engineering counselling this year, 163 filled less than 20% seats, and 103 of them not even 10%.
Many of these colleges may not now be able to meet their expenses towards staff salary, electricity bill and maintenance. A college needs more than 60% admissions to break even; only 100 colleges have crossed this mark.
Some 50-100 engineering colleges may shut this year, which is more than the number that did over the last three years, according to education experts. From 507 engineering colleges in 2018-19, the number has come down to 461 in 2020-21.
Experts asked the state government and Anna University to take measures to save students and faculty members in these colleges.
"If colleges have fewer than 200 admissions, it may not be viable for them to hire good faculty members. They cannot upgrade labs and other infrastructure. It will affect their placements, which result in poor admissions," said career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi. P Selvaraj, secretary of Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges, said, "Colleges need at least 50% admissions in a year to meet all the expenses. If the state government allowed the engineering colleges to start arts and science colleges to use the existing infrastructure, many colleges may survive. Otherwise, the situation looks very grim."
He urged the government to allow private engineering colleges to admit students without counselling since there are fewer students and more seats. "They can conduct counselling for enrolling students to government and government-aided colleges," he said.
"The manpower requirement of engineers has not been done properly and the mismatch of demand and supply resulted in the present problem," said MK Surappa, vice-chancellor of Anna University. The Covid-19 crisis has compounded the problem with jobs drying up.