Telangana: Govt engg college enrollment plummets despite increase in seats

A surprising trend has emerged in engineering education in the State. Despite a significant increase in the number of seats in the colleges under the government sector, the enrollments have plummeted over the last four academic years.

Hyderabad: A surprising trend has emerged in engineering education in the State. Despite a significant increase in the number of seats in the colleges under the government sector, the enrollments have plummeted over the last four academic years.

This shift in student preference highlights a growing divide between the government and private engineering education in the State.

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As per the information shared by the Telangana Council of Higher Education (TGCHE), government engineering colleges offered 3,151 seats in the 2020-21 academic year. By 2023-24, this number nearly doubled to 5,890, reflecting the expansion of engineering education in the government sector in the last four years.

However, while the seats soared, the percentage of enrollment significantly dropped from 83.02 in 2020- 21 to 67.33 in 2023-24. In the last four academic years, four new engineering colleges under the government sector have been established, taking the total to 18. One constituent college each of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU)-Hyderabad has been set up in Sircilla, Wanaparthy, Mahabubabad, and Khammam.

“Students, due to the lack of required faculty members and facilities, are not preferring these newly established colleges. However, this is not the case with Osmania University and JNTU-Hyderabad campus colleges where seats are in huge demand,” said a senior TGCHE official.

This year, another government engineering college has come up in Kosgi in erstwhile Mahabubnagar district, offering Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), CSE Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and CSE Data Science programmes.

Meanwhile, the private engineering colleges in State have witnessed an increase in student enrollments with 78.01 per cent filled out of 1,11,769 seats in 2023-24 as against 65.85 per cent out of 95,837 seats.

This is despite the number of private engineering colleges having come down from 166 in 2020-21 to 160 in 2023-24. This academic year, there are 174 with 155 private and 19 government engineering colleges.