Hyderabad: In these recessionary times, coaching centres are thinking out of the box to keep their cash registers ringing. With fewer takers for the once hot engineering and management courses owing to the slump in the job market, coaching centres have promptly dropped them from their menu, adding the erstwhile lack lustre courses on cracking entrance tests for government jobs.
   And the business idea has clicked with hundreds of students thronging their centres, taking preparatory courses to crack the entrance test for Junior Telecom Officers (JTO), District Selection Committee (DSC - for wannabe teachers in government schools) apart from Group I & II AP Public Service Commission (APPSC) exam for jobs in various departments of the state government. Other jobs scoring among the youth these days are those in nationalised banks.
   With young people turning desperately to government jobs, coaching centres have converted their areas of specialisation from engineering, medicine, MBA and MCA to these ‘sarkari’ streams. The once bustling Eamcet and Icet coaching hubs at Ameerpet, Malkajgiri and Tarnaka have metamorphosed themselves into JTO, DSC and APPSC coaching centres.
   With computer courses no longer in demand, many computer training institutes at Ameerpet have now started offering training for DSC candidates. “There are 53,000 posts which are vacant and more than three times the number of candidates who are applying for the examination. Anyone who enters into DSC coaching will make a profit. The sale of learning material itself is profitable,” said S Ramana Kumar of Bright Tutorials, Ameerpet which has a strength of 1,500 DSC aspirants per batch. He said that the decision to convert the centre came when many of the computer language trainers shifted to other institutes to get DSC coaching themselves.
   Many DSC tutorials including, Shamzeer Tutorials, Sri Ram Tutorials and Fresh Tutorials were earlier computer language training centres. The DSC examinations are scheduled for May 29, 30 and 31.
   The junior telecom officer test is again in great demand. “BSNL had announced more than three thousand jobs under Junior Telecom posts. Many engineering graduates who have lost their jobs and others who have not got jobs after B Tech or polytechnics are opting for these courses now,” manager of JTO coaching centre, Sparks, T N Sneha Raman said. The centre was a premier training institute for Eamcet not too long ago.
   In fact, the demand for these courses is so immense that many institutions offering JTO coaching have increased the number of seats to fulfil the demand. There are centres which run classes on various shifts to accommodate more students.
   Some of the coaching institutes that trained students for Civil Services are also trying their hand at APPSC. There are institutes including some of the leading civils training institutes such as, Thought Train, Shameerpet that has tried shifting focus to APPSC. Meanwhile, some of the institutes that gave GATE and GMAT coaching to students have now taken to APPSC training. “Many candidates want to try their hand at something stable. The state services are a favourite this season many of our students were shifting from our school to another,” owner of Insight coaching institute, Balanagar, N T Subhashan Reddy said. According to the coaching institutes an increase in the number of takers for the government tests is also because many students from other districts come to the city considering it a centre for coaching. “Most of the students who have joined the institute are those who have come from places like Machilipatnam, Eluru and Medak. Such students are in dire need of stable government jobs in the present market situation,” Reddy said.