Seats in top engg colleges in State go under the hammer!

Hyderabad: Questions are being raised over the private engineering collegesauctioning the seats in premium specialisationsofB.Tech at enormously high price tags.

According to sources, the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTUH) has about 216 affiliated engineering colleges under its jurisdiction and has just begun the affiliation process.

Early on, the affiliation process of the colleges had come to a halt in February this year following the directions of the government. Now, JNTU-H has to rush to complete the inspections and affiliation process, as only eleven days are remaining for EAPCET counseling, which is scheduled to start on June 27.

According to officials of JNTU-H, the inspection has been completed but the affiliation process has just begun and will be completed by this June or July. “Due to the election code, the inspection and affiliation process was stopped. As the election code ended the process has just begun. Under JNTUH,the total colleges are 216, including Engineering (140), Pharmacy (71) and MBA (5)," said a JNTU-H official.

Besides, the Telangana Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (TAFRC) has yet to issue guidelines for the fixation of fees. The earlier fee fixation for the professional courses like B.Tech, M.Tech, MBA and B.Pharmacy for the block period of 2023-2025 ended, and it is yet to fix the new fee structure for the ensuing block period, beginning from 2024-25 academic year.

While the affiliation process is yet to be completed and the EAPCET counselling to begin in eleven days, private colleges are finding it lucrative to auction the seats in premium B.Tech courses such asArtificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI&ML), Cyber Security, Data Sciences, etc. Besides, evergreen courses such as B.Tech in Computer Sciences (CS) and Electronics and Communications Engineering (ECE) continue to bring dividends to the managements, as they sell the seats for a price.

Private Engineering colleges including CVR Engineering College, Srinidhi Institution of Technology, GokarajuRangaraju College of Engineering and many for more colleges that are affiliated to JNTUH and Osmania University are charging anywhere between Rs 15 lakh to Rs 25 lakh, including donation fees.

“We were opting for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning courses. But only a few colleges have this course and the fee is around Rs 15 lakh,” said Venu, whose bother scored a rank of over 20,000.

“It is shocking to know that this is happening before the counselling process has begun. Also,when the affiliation is still in progress, how can private colleges under management quota sell seats? We have approached the State government and also the Telangana State Council of Higher Education many times to take action against these colleges. However, no action has been taken and that is the reason that the private colleges are increasing fees every year,” said Nagaraju, State president of SFI.

“It will be better if the counseling process and seat allocation process are done online instead of offline, as most of the seats in offline process are reserved under management quota,” said Jeevan, Telangana State Universities convenor, ABVP.