Telangana: ‘Evergreen’ engineering courses lose out to CSE programme

For the academic year 2023-24, a staggering 6,930 seats mainly in the Civil, Mechanical, Electronics & Communication Engineering, and Electrical and Electronics Engineering programmes have been slashed

Hyderabad: Lack of demand among students besides not having adequate job opportunities, the core undergraduate engineering branches — Civil, Mechanical, Electrical and Electronics — seem to be losing sheen and their ‘evergreen’ tag. These core engineering branches are making way for the introduction of more seats in BE/BTech Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and allied branches in the State.

For the academic year 2023-24, a staggering 6,930 seats mainly in the Civil, Mechanical, Electronics & Communication Engineering, and Electrical and Electronics Engineering programmes have been slashed and an equal number of seats was enhanced in the CSE and allied branches such as AI & ML, Data Science, Cyber Security and IoT in the private unaided engineering colleges.

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Most private engineering colleges have reduced seats in the core engineering branches by half. For example, a college offering Civil engineering programme with 120 seats reduced its intake to 60, while some even reduced them to 30 seats, which is the basic intake to run the course.

Of late, BE/BTech CSE and allied courses have been witnessing huge demand among students and parents as they aid students in landing plum jobs even before their graduation. However, according to experts, the demand might create an imbalance between core engineering and CSE graduates coming out each year. “There is no demand among students for Civil and Mechanical Engineering programmes. Hence, colleges have opted for seat reduction and enhanced intake in CSE and allied areas, which have good demand. However, we have ensured that colleges do not close the core branches and run them with a minimum of 30 seats,” JNTU-Hyderabad Registrar and Professor of Mechanical Engineering Dr Manzoor Hussain told ‘Telangana Today’.

There are a few colleges this academic year that have completely merged Cyber Security, AI and ML, Internet of Things courses into the main CSE programme and enhanced the seat intake or opted for a new course.

In all, 7,635 seats have been approved in new courses and intake enhancement in existing courses by the State government with financial implications of Rs 27.39 crore from 2023-24. Giving the nod, the State government instructed colleges, which have discontinued a course or reduced seats, to ensure that necessary faculty and facilities be extended to existing and previous students until they pass out.

Technical & Professional Institutions Employees Association Telangana State president Dr V Balakrishna Reddy wanted the core engineering branches staff trained in CSE programmes to be re-arranged as CSE faculty.