Placement crunch: There is a shortage of 30% seats in Karnataka government engineering colleges | Jobs Vox

The seats in government engineering colleges have decreased this year.

The recently concluded seat allotment for undergraduate engineering courses for the academic year 2022-23 shows that at least 30% seats in government colleges remain vacant.

As per the data available from the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), initially a total of 5,433 seats were available in 19 government engineering colleges.

After all the rounds of counselling, now 1,793 seats are left vacant. The seats which have no takers include University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), Bengaluru, which is one of the most sought after government engineering colleges.

Although the Karnataka Examinations Authority had allotted 4,036 seats in government colleges, only 3,640 candidates took admission.

UVCE had 37 seats vacant across various streams, Mechanical had the maximum number of 14. Civil stood second with 13. The situation is no different in other institutions run by the government.

Read this also | Karnataka higher education department rejects proposal for tribal university

Courses like Computer Science, Electronics, Electrical and Information Science are considered to be in demand. But, some government colleges failed to attract students for these courses as well.

For example, the Government Engineering College in Gangavati has 18 seats vacant out of a total of 63 seats in the computer science stream.

According to experts, one of the main reasons why students do not prefer government colleges is the lack of placement opportunities.

Professor Karisiddappa, former vice-chancellor of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), said, “While choosing a seat, one of the priorities of students and parents is placement and government colleges are lagging behind in placing students through campus recruitment.”

He added that the placements in these colleges would improve with time, as the government is upgrading government engineering colleges as Karnataka Institute of Technology (KIT). Six colleges have been identified for upgradation in the first phase.