Chandigarh, Dec 14 (Inditop.com) Courses in management, engineering, hotel management and pharmacy may be the most sought after in other places but thousands of seats in these streams are going abegging in the progressive state of Punjab.
Private technical institutions in the state are saying that nearly 45 percent of the seats — 26,000 out of the total 60,000 seats in most sought-after streams — are lying vacant in leading institutions.
“This is resulting in a loss of hundreds of crores of rupees annually to these institutions and to the state government as the seats are not being filled. The Punjab government is unable to match up to the liberal policies being followed by states like Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan in attracting students and investment in the education field,” Anshu Kataria, chairman of the Aryans Group, a leading institution in management and other courses located near Chandigarh, told Inditop.
With the global economic meltdown showing signs of recovery and courses, especially in the management stream generating interest among students, institutions in Punjab offering such courses were also hopeful of revival. But that has not happened as in management courses alone, 11,300 seats out of total 25,000 are lying vacant.
“More than 26,000 seats out of 60,000 are lying vacant in various private unaided technical institutions of Punjab. Ninety-five percent of the colleges in Punjab are private and if the state government does not take immediate steps to bail out these colleges, they will not be able to impart education,” J.S. Dhaliwal, president of Punjab Unaided Technical Institution Association (PUTIA), said here.
Chairmen from leading educational groups from all over Punjab held a meeting here Sunday to discuss the issue. These included Zora Singh (Desh Bhagat Group), Anshu Kataria (Aryans Group), Manjit Singh (Doaba Group), Gurvinder Singh (Rayat and Bahra Group), Rohin Sachdeva (Lala Lajpat Rai Group), Avtar Singh (Sukhmani Group), H.S. Jwanda (Bhai Gurdas Group) and others.
Several thousands of students are enrolled in these institutions for various courses.
“If corrective measures are not taken immediately to save these private colleges, the situation would worsen in next academic year. In engineering 8,000 seats out of 26,000; in Pharmacy 1,500 seats out of 2,000; in management 11,300 seats out of 25,000; in hotel management and other courses 4,500 seats out of 6,400 are lying vacant.”
All the private unaided technical institutions in the state are affiliated to the Punjab Technical University in Jalandhar, 150 km from here.
Managements of these institutes blame the Punjab government for not adopting ‘pro-student’ and ‘pro-education’ policies to attract students in the state.
“Earlier, neighbouring states like Himachal and Jammu and Kashmir used to contribute students (20,000-25,000 annually) to institutes in Punjab. But with governments in these states adopting liberal education policies in setting up institutions there, the students are not coming to Punjab. The Rajasthan government allots free land to institutions setting up an engineering college in any district which does not have one,” Kataria pointed out.
Dhaliwal said while the Punjab government had forced the private unaided institutes to reserve 10 percent of seats quota for economically weaker section (EWS) students, it has done nothing about the 25 demands put up by these institutes when both sides signed a memorandum of understanding last year.
Most of the private institutions in Punjab have been set up in the last five years.
He added: “But till date none of the demands have been accepted and many of the newly opened private colleges are on the verge of the closure because of problems. To add to this, the state government is issuing show-cause notices to our institutions.”
He said despite spending lakhs of rupees on advertisements inviting applications from EWS candidates, the seats are lying vacant as applicants are just not there.
PUTIA members have now started debating whether they should continue with the EWS scheme or not.
State government officials, however, say that the drop in number of students from other states is not the fault of the Punjab government.
“We are trying to help out in this situation but cannot force students from other states to come and study here,” a senior government official said.
