Core engineering courses making way for CSE in Telangana

Given the exponential growth of IT industries in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the State in the last 10 years, the majority of engineering aspirants are being drawn to the CSE, which offers jobs with good pay packages.

Hyderabad: In the race for engineering education, the core branches including Civil, Mechanical, ECE and EEE are losing out to the dominating Computer Science and Engineering (CSE).

Given the exponential growth of IT industries in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the State in the last 10 years, the majority of engineering aspirants are being drawn to the CSE, which offers jobs with good pay packages. With burgeoning demand for the CSE among the aspirants, the managements of private engineering colleges have shifted their focus to this course.

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This year, around 9,000 seats in the core engineering branches are expected to be slashed and converted to CSE. Most of these seats are in Civil, Mechanical, Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE), and Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE). A few colleges have also sought the conversion of seats from IT to CSE.

How does seat conversion happen?

If a private engineering college has 60 seats in the Civil branch, the management can request the government to reduce the intake from 60 to 30 seats in the Civil branch and enhance such a reduced number of seats in the CSE. However, the colleges must offer a minimum of 30 seats in each of the core engineering branches.

Why seat conversion?

The core engineering branches, which are long regarded as pillars of infrastructure development and manufacturing industries, have been witnessing a decline in student enrollment over the past couple of academic years. This has been due to a boom in the IT sector.

Out of the 16,296 vacant engineering seats in the convenor quota during the last academic year, 5,723 are in IT, 5,156 in Civil and Mechanical, 4,959 in EEE and 458 in other branches. In this background, colleges sought the government’s nod for seats’ conversion from core branches to CSE.

The government is expected to take a call on it in a couple of days since the Telangana Engineering, Agriculture and Pharmacy Common Entrance Test (TG EAPCET) 2024 admission counselling is around the corner. Last year, nearly 5,000 seats in core branches were slashed.