Engineering Admissions 2013: IIT Seats In General Category Are Vacant!
The general category seats in IITs are vacant as the wannabe engineers are refusing to join the IITs - the premium engineering colleges in India. TOI reports that as many as 769 students have refused to join the premier institutes claiming that they don't have faith in the new IITs announced by the government. Some of the students have said that they've been allotted seats in not-so-popular engineering disciplines. The update is surprising because getting admissions into the Indian Institutes Of Technology is arguably more difficult than getting into the top engineering colleges or universities anywhere in the world.
Usually, engineering seats for the reserved category would go vacant and the general category seats would be the toughest to get. However, this time the general category seats are vacant along with the reserved category seats. The second round of admissions will begin on Wednesday and the IITs hope that the general category seats will fill up quickly. JEE (Advanced) chairman, H.C. Gupta said that hundreds of seats are available for the students of all categories.
Indian School Of Mines, Dhanbad has most vacant seats this year, IT-BHU (now an IIT) on the other hand has very few vacant seats. Until a few years ago, the IITs never had to conduct a second round of admissions to fill up the seats as all the seats would fill up in the first round itself.
The new IITs announced by the government of India haven't been successful in attracting students. These IITs have no track record and it looks like the students are preferring NITs and other top colleges over the brand IIT. Many people believe that the new IITs are equivalent to any other new engineering colleges in India which are usually promoted by business groups or politicians.
Our Take: Sooner or later, this had to happen. The government has diluted the brand IIT by opening up more colleges with the brand name. But the trend isn't limited to IITs. We're noticing a general decline in interest in opting for engineering. Engineering colleges have mushroomed in every corner and the quality of engineering education they offer is questionable. Most of the recruiters have said that it's almost impossible for them to pick up candidates right out of college and put them on the live projects. IT companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro conduct their own training programs for the fresh graduates before they allot them to projects.
We'd like to know from our CEans what do they think about engineering seats going vacant in IITs (that too, in the general category)? What's the probable fix for the situation?