IT Seats To Be Cut Down By Private Engg Colleges

The sources revealed that, around 4000 undergraduate Private Engineering Seats, mainly in Information Technology and Computer Science disciplines will be abolished in the state from the coming academic year, the entrance examination for which is scheduled on May 6.

Many colleges are increasing seats in the core disciplines of mechanical, electrical and civil. Confirming the development, Odisha Private Engineering College Association (OPECA) honorary secretary Binod Dash said around 60 colleges will shut down certain streams or reduce the intake capacity, trimming down the seats by 4000. “The colleges wanting to close the courses for past two years got no objection certificates (NOC) from the state recently” he added.

Dash also said “ The Synergy group, closed down its IT stream officially from this year, for which it had stopped admission for the past two years. The group will increase seats for mechanical and electrical seats at its Dhenkanal college besides Mechanical stream in its Bhubaneshwar college by 30 each”.

Out of 37,800 Engineering seats in 110 technical institutes of the state over 24,000 seats remained vacant in 2011-12. around 18,000 seats were vacant a year before in 2010. Dash said there would not be much difference in the total number of engineering seats available next year because of the increase in seats of core disciplines.

The increasing demand for core sector is promoting the colleges to divert their infrastructure by cutting down courses less in demand, said the Educationists. The Vice chancellor of Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla BK Nanda, said “Demands for IT and computer science have gone down because of fluctuation in the market while boom in construction and power infrastructure has propelled demands for civil, mechanical and to some extent electrical wings. And hence the colleges are consolidating their infrastructure accordingly”.