Ranga Reddy: Many private engineering colleges shut down this year

Ranga Reddy: The number of private engineering colleges in Telangana State are gradually decreasing in every educational year since 2014-15. The seats in engineering colleges were vacant, which created a problem. Which is the only reason the colleges are shutting down. In 2014-15 there were 325 colleges in Telangana State. But many colleges were closed and in the 2020-21 there were only 178 colleges which survived and 156 colleges were shut down. In the present year some colleges have applied for the government to grant NOC to close the colleges.

In the first phase of EAMCET-2020 counselling for 70,135 engineering seats only 50,137 seats were fulfilled mainly in the colleges of Hyderabad and outskirts of Hyderabad. As usually, rural engineering colleges were facing problems as the students are not joining the college. The seats were filled only in 35 colleges, which are located in the outskirts of Hyderabad. Colleges in Hyderabad got maximum number of students and fulfilled the quota of seats.

However, private engineering colleges management said that running a college in the districts does not give them any returns. The State government's delay in releasing the fee reimbursement dues for the past few years has only made matters worse."We barely made any revenue in the past few years as the number of admissions have been less than 100. Now, renting out the building to the government or leasing it to a school will fetch us revenue of at least Rs 4-5 lakh per month," a correspondent of a college management said.

While many others have explored options such as converting the premises into a hostel or a paying guest facility, some have sold their property.