NAGPUR: The first round of engineering and medical admissions is over. On one hand, seats in these colleges have filled up, on the other, colleges offering basic science courses are going through a tough time. While there were lesser admissions to these courses, as a trend now, there were also a lot of cancellations.
If this was not enough, opening up of as many as 19 engineering colleges as added a whopping 4,500 seats in Nagpur University and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) also increased existing capacity of some engineering colleges with the addition of 380 seats. Earlier, the varsity had 21 engineering with a combined capacity of over 7,000 seats. The combined capacity of all engineering colleges in the university stands to nearly 12,000.
Additionally, there're nearly 2,000 seats of health sciences courses in Vidarbha.
When contacted, admissions in charge of Institute of Science, R R Waikar agreed that popularity of pure science courses is going down, as opportunities in professional education are available freely.
"Out of initial 275 admissions, 40 have been already cancelled. It is mostly due towards engineering that students are inclined," he said.
Endorsing his views, Panna Akhani, principal of LAD College for Women said, "As a craze more students are drifting towards engineering. And with so many engineering colleges coming up, lesser students are opting for basic sciences. Although, as per my information, admissions this year have been a wee bit better than last year, the procedure is yet to finish. So the actual statistics will be available only in the first week of August."
Principal of Dharampeth Science College A R Aipatwar said, "The admissions are certainly lesser. For example, while we used to conduct 5 batches for computer science, we now have only 3. Apart from this other subjects too are affected with fewer admissions and more cancellations. With the conclusion of the admission procedure only will the final details be available."
The trend is not only in Vidarbha, but it is same for pure sciences courses all over the state. In places like Mumbai and Pune, students opt for commerce courses rather than science and seats of BSc and MSc courses remained vacant in most of the institutes.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Nagpur/Science_colleges_facing_exodus/articleshow/3286307.cms
