Officials feel about 100 colleges are trying to evade dues with closure requests

Poor response from students and stringent action from the authorities is forcing engineering colleges to surrender courses expressing their inability to run them.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH) has received nearly 350 applications for closure of existing courses from about 100 colleges. Information Technology (IT) from the B. Tech stream is the major loser with about 90 colleges preferring to close the course while several colleges also applied for closure of MBA and MCA courses.

Officials are surprised to find such requests from top colleges and big names in the industry that offer multiple courses. “The low intake has made these courses economically unviable. Moreover, colleges also fear being exposed by the reports from the Task Force Committees with the High Court also showing keen interest in the issue,” a senior official said. He reminds that majority of these colleges were not started with service motto and closure is the best option for them.

Some of these colleges have also defaulted on the common service fee to be paid to the universities. The common service fee dues to the university are around Rs. 22.5 crore, and officials feel these colleges are trying to evade dues with closure requests. “We will give the No Objection Certificates (NOCs) only if they clear the dues,” the official said. The NOCs from the respective universities are mandatory for the colleges to approach the AICTE with closure requests. The closure requests were expected with dipping interest in engineering courses apart from the surplus seats due to mushrooming colleges. This year only 28 per cent of IT seats were filled in the convenor quota and there were hardly any takers in the management quota. Out of the 17,317 seats only 4,983 students opted for the B.Tech (IT) course leaving 12,334 seats vacant.

Similarly, demand for management and computer science courses also plummeted this year with 21,776 seats out of the 67,518 seats going vacant in MBA and 15,224 seats out of the 23,532 remaining vacant in the MCA stream. The MCA courses suffered the worst with not a single student joining in 159 colleges while MBA was better with zero admissions in 29 colleges.

Source : Hindu