Inadequate student intake plagues technical institutes in Odisha

BHUBANESWAR: Both the Odisha government and private promoters in the state are a worried lot as large scale vacancies of seats in technical institutes of Odisha have been reported.

There are huge vacancies in engineering colleges, polytechnics and industrial training institutes (ITI)s across the state.

According to a senior official in the Skill Development & Technical Education department, the government and private technical institutes have total intake capacity of 1,78,301.

However, the actual intake in 2015 was only 97,925, leaving a whopping 81,376 seats lying vacant.

About 45 percent seats are lying vacant in these technical education institutes.

Sources said most of the seats are lying vacant in private colleges owing to lack of infrastructure, faculty and slow down in the market.

Odisha has 93 engineering colleges and out of which only five are run by the state government. These institutions have 45,539 seats.

While all the 3000 seats of government run engineering colleges are running with full intake capacity, private engineering colleges having 42,539 seats facing a whopping 67 percent of vacancies with only 14,117 seats are filled up by students.

The situation in Polytechnics is also critical. Out of total 142 institutions, 32 are run by government and 110 are run by private promoters with a total intake capacity of 45,915.

Both government and private run polytechnics are facing lower intake.

Out of the 8355 seats available in government run polytechnics, 6525 are filled up leaving 1830 seats lying vacant. Out of 37,560 seats in private run polytechnics, 21,644 are filled up, and 15,916 seats are lying vacant, said sources.

In the case of ITIs, 44 run by the state government and 586 are promoted by the private entities.

There are 85,911 seats in all these 630 ITIs and out of it 50,703 seats are filled up leaving 35, 208 seats are lying vacant.

Out of 67,475 seats available in private run ITIs, 33,522 seats are vacant resulting in 50 vacancies hitting these institutions.

Vacancies in the technical institutions are gradually increasing in the state as the students passing out from these institutions hardly get any job.

The industrial dream of Naveen Patnaik government has dashed off as several big-ticket projects are facing various hurdles to ground their projects. Besides, several others are facing raw material linkage to run their plants.