With just 16 colleges and 2,642 seats in 1978, the number of colleges went up to 348 last year with intake capacity of over 1.33 lakh. But last year, over 25,000 seats remained vacant in the state, they said.
The situation is worst in Nagpur University where over 7,000 engineering seats remained vacant last year.
Joint Director (Technical Education) in Nagpur, Gulab Thakre attributed the trend to ever-increasing number of colleges. "Even the students coming to Maharashtra from other states like UP and Bihar have dropped sharply as many colleges opened in those states," he said.
He said students from the region prefer institutes in Mumbai and Pune due to better job prospects.
With addition of 11 new engineering colleges this year and many more likely to come, their number would cross 360 with intake capacity all set to touch 1.40 lakh. This will only lead to even more vacant seats this year, authorities feared.
Till last year, the country had 3,393 engineering colleges with 14.86 lakh seats. This year, AICTE has already granted over 100 new colleges of which 11 were in Maharashtra. With this, thousands of new seats would be added in the country, as per AICTE chairman S S Mantha.
The apex body for engineering education had, at the same time, received closure notices from as many as 138 engineering colleges due to the large number of vacant seats making them face financial crunch.
