Tuesday, July 20, 2010
They are not willing to take risks with courses that may not yield placements

• Only 26 opt for Aeronautical Engineering
• No takers for Mining Engineering, Silk Technology

Bangalore: At closing time of the engineering admissions on Monday, students holding ranks up to 10,000 in the State's Common Entrance Test had chosen their seats. Shockingly, seats in at least 10 courses were left untouched on Day Six, and seven courses had less than six students opting for them.

These courses include the once celebrated courses such as Aerospace Engineering or automation and robotics engineering, or the more fancy and inter-disciplinary mechatronics. Students opted to stay clear of these branches, even in leading colleges, and continued to opt for core courses such as Electronics and Communication Engineering, Computer Science Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, to name a few of the hot favourites. Even the much-coveted branch Aeronautical Engineering had only 26 students opting for it and Automobile Engineering had just 17 takers.

Several courses such as Silk Technology, Polymer Technology, Mining Engineering, Industrial Production and Ceramic Technology, to name a few, have been completely ignored by engineering seat aspirants.

So why are students reluctant to opt for non-mainstream courses? Students, who had gathered at the KEA premises on Monday, told The Hindu that the main reason was that these courses simply did not guarantee jobs or placements. Even Aeronautical Engineering, students said, was a course worth pursuing only if offered by the Indian Institutes of Technology or institutes of similar repute.

Ajay Govind and Ravikanth Nallu, who both opted for Mechanical Engineering seats today, said that students were inclined to opt for core courses because it left their options open. “I can always specialise in Mechatronics if I want to later. Courses like Mechanical give solid grounding,” Ravikanth said.

His friend Ajay said the recent recession, and its impact on placements, had forced students to think deeper and do more ground research before coming for counselling.

Experts concur with these trends. A VTU official told The Hindu that although it was surprising that students were being “over-cautious”, there were several branches of engineering that deserve to be shut down. “Even if you take last year's counselling records, you will observe that certain courses – such as silk or polymer technology have not evinced much response in the past three, or even five years.”

Yet colleges were reluctant to close down these branches as the procedures were complicated.

“We are aware of the fact that several colleges were running courses with single digit class strengths. But colleges have to take the initiative to get the course scrapped,” the official added.