There is a tremendous growth in the number of institutions providing technical education in the recent years. The majority of growth is in the private sector providing engineering courses. However, some university engineering colleges have also been established. Today, there are 628 engineering institutions in Andhra Pradesh. With an annual intake of whopping 2,16,280 for the academic year 2009-2010, AP is well ahead of other states in numbers beyond their reach.
Engineering and technical education in the state became very popular, as many people believe that it has high employment potential in India & abroad. However there is a deep concern over the enrollment in polytechnic courses in the state.
From the existing colleges in Andhra Pradesh, nearly 45% are professional colleges offering Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy, Agriculture, Veterinary, MBA & MCA courses. And nearly half (43%) of the students in Higher education go for professional education in the state.
The state government recently has given permission to 67 private engineering colleges to introduce polytechnic courses from this academic year. At present the state has 160 polytechnic colleges with 40,000 seats. Now another 13,500 seats will be added to the existing ones. However, these numbers are far less compared to the actual standard.
Growth of Seats in Engineering and Polytechnic Courses in AP
| Academic Year | No. of Engineering seats | No. of Polytechnic seats |
| 1996-97 | 10,455 | 14,190 |
| 2009-10 | 2,16,280 | 53,500 |
One engineering graduate is expected to supervise four diploma holders on an average at a workplace. Total number of seats for the academic year 2009-10 in engineering courses is 2,16,280. So there should be 8,65,120 seats in the polytechnic courses, but currently there are only 53,500 seats. This shows that the situation is quite opposite as only one polytechnic diploma holder is being produced for every four engineering students in the state. And also, from the above table it can be drawn that the number of engineering seats grew by a astounding 20 times while the polytechnic seats grew by only 3 times in a span of 15 years.
Though the state government’s decision to introduce polytechnic courses in engineering colleges will help to fill the gap to some extent, there is lot more to do to narrow this huge gap. Another option that government can concern is to cancel permission for those engineering colleges that could not fill even a small percent of seats allotted and have poor standards in imparting quality technical education.
Source: World Bank Report on state of higher education in AP and Deccan Chronicle
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