Over 32k MBA seats left vacant in B-schools of Maharashtra

A total of 45,700 MBA seats are available for admissions in the state, only 12,800 seats have been filled after the fourth round of Centralised Admission Process (CAP).

Which leads to convert the minority quota seats to general category seats.

Around 2,300 minority seats are available in the state, which are not added in CAP rounds. These seats are bow being added to the general category.

Over 35 B-schools have already converted the minority seats.

After the Centralised Admission Process (CAP) round-I (which ended on June 24, 2013), 15,751 seats were allotted out of which 8,840 students got admission.

At the end of CAP round-II (which ended on July 3, 2013), 5,185 seats were allotted but only 2,720 applicants reported to the colleges.

Only 823 seats were allotted after CAP round-III (ended July 11, 2013) out of which 761 candidates got admission.

"Though surrendering of minority seats is adopted by many institutes, the number has gone up greatly this year. Fewer placement opportunities and lack of faith in new institutes are the most prominent reasons for seats going vacant," said Dr Kavita Laghare, director, Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies.

"Students in such cities are apprehensive of the new colleges that have sprung up there," said DS Meshram, joint director, Directorate of Technical Education (DTE).

"Many engineers, who earlier favoured to get their MBA degrees, are now opting to go abroad instead of doing a post-graduation here, leaving many seats vacant," he added.

"Many students don't get the minimum marks required for entrance. Also, only because a certain institute has minority seats, it doesn't mean that students will join that college, if it is not up to the mark" said a faculty member at Chetna's Institute of Management and research Centre, Bandra.