SMALL ENGINEERING COLLEGES OF GHAZIABAD: A BLEAK FUTURE

Economics says "When Supply is more than the Demand of a product, the Price falls." This is particularly true in the case of Technical Education in U.P. and perhaps upto some extent in the country itself.

Over the past few years the supply is outstripping the demand for Engineering and Management seats in the country. Just take the example of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of India is home to about 333 Engineering colleges which cumulatively offer a total seats of 1,15,379 in Engineering Education where as according to University datas the total number of students took admission in various engineering colleges after qualifying SEE amounts to mere 25,903. So, what happens to the vacant seats? And this year the figures are not going to be improved it seems.

This year a total 1,60,561 candidates had registered for the State Entrance Examination, out of whom, 1,29,924 have qualified. But, there are approximately 1.33 lakh B.Tech seats in the Engineering colleges affiliated to GBTU and MTU.

There are clearly a huge gap between the supply and demand of Engineering seats. In this situation, it has been believed that many small colleges will be bankrupt due to the lack of students. Many colleges have defered the salaries of the teachers and other employees due to the revenue crunch. It seems a grim scenario ahead for those colleges.

Due to the revenue crunch, promoters of small colleges are taking the refuge of cost cutting, and as a part of that they are trying to trim their faculty strength. Surely, this will affect the quality of the education as the each teacher will be over burdened and perhaps have to take five classes per day, where as the AICTE limits the load at best 18 classes per week. Also, most of the colleges don't follow the exact teacher students ratio of 1:20 prescribed by the apex body.

Many promoters are planning to opt out by selling their stakes in the colleges. The causes of their exits are the facts that running colleges in western U.P. is no longer a profitable business. They have cited that due to lack of students in taking admission, the colleges are no longer the chickens that lay gold eggs, which were in fact so just three years ago. So, why these colleges suddenly loss their values? What are the reasons behind these failures?

There are several reasons for the fall in numbers of students opting B.Tech courses. The most vital reason is the very high tution fees in colleges under MTU and GBTU compared to colleges in other states like Karnataka, Punjab and Rajasthan. Most of the colleges here charge more than 90,000.00 in the first year B.Tech where as colleges in other states charges below 60,000.00, even colleges in Punjab and West Bengal charge below 50 thousand and this is going to be a major factor.

The 2nd factor is the placement after the completion of the degree. Although many colleges claim tall, citing a long list of companies taking interest to place their students in very good packages, but reality always bites hard. The negative publicity by the ex students are also eating the pie here and there is no solution other than boosting the placement record by making a good relation with the HR of these companies by the respective college authorities.

The third most important factor is the sagging quality of the available faculty members. Many teachers although possess M.Tech degrees are not competent to impart quality education due to lack of depth of required knowledge as well as the essential communicating power required to be a good teacher. In some cases, due to over burdened schedule, a good teacher becomes unable to teach in the class. Just imagine the mental fatigue a teacher experienced while taking 5th or 6th class in a day when each class is of 55 min. duration.

A college has to show money to run the next three years during the visits from AICTE. So all the colleges have to show enough balance to pay the salaries of the employees for atleast three years, otherwise they won't get the permission to run the colleges, still some of them couldn't pay the salaries of the teachers and staffs. Why? Becouse they must have showed enough balances to acquire the clearences during the AICTE visits. Where does the money go? Vanished! Or siphoned off? There are several "skips" of the rules and regulations these college authorities used to practise.