Interest dwindles, Anna University may trim engineering seats

CHENNAI: With the number of vacant engineering seats increasing every year, Anna University is considering reducing the intake capacity in its affiliated colleges, which are not performing well in the academic activities.

As per the All India Council for Technical Education’s statistics, with over two lakh engineering seats, Tamil Nadu tops other states in 2024-25, with over 30,000 seats added.

The Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE), which is under the Higher Education Department, conducts engineering admissions, ever since it took over from Anna University a few years ago. Dr T Purushothaman from the DOTE, who was in charge of 2024-25 Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA), said that over 61,000 engineering seats are vacant in the current academic session. “The total number of engineering seats available in the state was 2.4 lakh,” he added.

“As engineering courses used to be the first choice of students and parents, the number of seats increased every year. As engineering admissions increased in the state, engineering graduates also increased year by year,” professor Arul Aram, Anna University, Department of Media Sciences, and president of Anna University Teachers Association, said.

However, there has not been an increase in job opportunities for the increasing number of engineering graduates every year, he said. “Job opportunities are shrinking for engineering students and therefore they have drifted away to other professions.”

Expressing serious concerns on the growing number of vacant engineering seats every year, a senior official from the Higher Education Department, requesting anonymity, claimed that at present, the university plans to stop giving no-objection certificates to non-performing affiliated engineering colleges to increase the seat capacity.