About 7300 MBA seats go vacant in colleges under University of Pune: Foggy reflection of MBA
Master of Business Administration, a gateway to success in the corporate world is now losing its shimmer. It has been experienced by the University of Pune where about 7300 mba seats go vacant in colleges and these colleges are under the panel of University of Pune. Faculty of management at the University of Pune is in big dilemma these days. Faculty is perplexed by the cold reaction of students to post-graduate courses in management.
Somewhere around 50% of seats are still vacant even after four rounds of centralized admission process (CAP). Total availability of the mba seats across the state are 14, 774 and 7300 seats are from Pune region only. Officials at the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) are also in dilemma as it is the second time when this has happened. 
Last year even after the fifth round of CAP; there were thousands of seats vacant. It had never happened before, but it didn't have much effect on admissions. Then it was decided to give admissions to students who hadn't even appeared for common entrance tests (CET) in management faculty, said by an official.
This year, among the 111 institutes that fall in the district, more than 50 per cent are vacant. This year as well DTE officials are planning to do the same. S K Mahajan, director of DTE, accepted that students were showing lesser interest towards the management faculty. Management faculty expert said that we are experiencing this downward tenor and its may be because students are losing their trust in the placements process as well as high number of seats and colleges.
Dr (CAPT) C M Chitale, dean of faculty of management, PUMBA, quoted that, he is also in dilemma after such cold response of students towards seats for the management faculty. It was expected that at least 14,000 admissions could have taken place after the fourth round of CAP. But only 3,500 students expressed interest and finally barely 1,190 admissions took place. The minimum cut-off marks have also come down by 30 marks in almost all colleges and yet the response was so low, which is shocking.
S K Mahajan, director of DTE, also said that there are two cases where in first case the number of students aspiring is not as much whereas in the other case, number of management institutes is increasing year after year. This is the reason why demand and supply is not matching the levels. Compared to last year's figure of 366 institutes, there are 385 institutes offering 40,000 seats as compared to 38,000 seats in 2010.
However, it is sure that students only want admissions in best management institutes. Basically, students have lost their faith in the burgeoning of newer institutes and in employment opportunities offered by them. So it is quite obvious that they will turn their heads towards the long established management institutes, said by a senior faculty member from MAEER's MIT School of Business.
Source: Richha Bhatnagar (Shiksha Team)
