Over 20% engineering seats in Jadavpur University lie vacant

This year, JU has over 260 empty seats after three rounds of counselling. The university will conduct counselling on August 16, 18 and 19 in order to fill them. Those unfilled will remain vacant since the university has to finish the induction programme by August 26. Read more here…

More than 20 per cent of engineering seats in the Jadavpur University (JU) lie vacant this year. The admission process in the university closed on August 6 and according to official statistics, 261 seats out of a total of 1,273 seats offered by the varsity remain unfilled.

Among all engineering programmes, the maximum vacant seats were recorded in mechanical engineering at 29, followed by civil engineering at 28. The architecture programme has 13 empty seats, chemical engineering – 21, construction engineering – 16, computer science and engineering – 16, electronics and telecommunication engineering – 11, , electrical engineering – 27, information technology – 22, pharmacy – 12, production engineering – 14, food tech and biochemical engineering – 8, printing engineering – 10, instrumentation and electronics – 14, power engineering – 13, architecture course, and metallurgical engineering – 7 as per the official website.

JU will conduct a decentralised counselling on August 16, 18 and 19 in order to fill the vacant seats.

Upon the completion of the three-phase counselling process that ended on July 20, the number of vacant seats was 197 which rose to 261 after the closure of admissions as the students who had blocked seats during counselling didn’t turn up for admissions. Also, it was noticed that students tend to opt for national institutes than state universities. The ongoing counselling of JEE Mains was considered as another reason for the low turnout of students.

According to a professor from the Electrical Engineering Department, JU, “Five years ago, every student dreamt of studying at Jadavpur University. This year, due to the politicisation of the varsity, only students ranking between 10,000 and 12,000 in JEE Main were called for the admission process.”

The highest fall was recorded in the Electrical Engineering department this year which has a total of 27 seats. “Students prefer to take up computer science and information technology over electrical or mechanical due to low availability of jobs in the core engineering streams like electrical, mechanical and chemical. Also, the lack of heavy industries coming up in Bengal, and closure of existing ones is making engineering lose its charm as a preferred course,” informed the professor.

There are overall 32,700 seats on offer in various engineering colleges in West Bengal. This year, a total of 22,175 seats remain vacant, as compared to 16,000 last year.

Across the country, the number of engineering seats available outnumbers the demand for engineers. According to Anil Sahasrabudhe, AICTE chairman, “Out of 14 lakh engineering seats available across the country, only 10 lakh students take admission.”