HYDERABAD : The standard of engineering colleges in the state, which had already hit rock-bottom when it was reported that less than 10 per cent of the graduates were "employable", have hit a new low due to the booming "project reports for sale" trade.

Many "project report centres" have mushroomed across the state to cater to the needs of thousands of final year engineering students and are openly selling project reports for anything between `20,000 to `30,000 depending on the topic.

Under the JNTU-Hyderabad alone, about 75,000 engineering students are in final year and are in dire need of project reports to obtain their engineering degree.

Since there is no monitoring of colleges over project reports by the universities, the business is growing by leaps and bounds. Project centres have ready-made lists of projects in each sub ject. If students insist on using their own project ideas, they are charged a higher fee.

Shockingly, the universities too are well aware about this unethical practice but express their inability to check this citing "lack of manpower" to monitor such a large number of colleges.

There are, in fact, faculty members in private colleges who get commissions for recommending students to opt for a particular project centre for obtaining the project report.

"Most of the students who buy project reports are those studying in private colleges where there is no adequate faculty and infrastructure to guide them to do the project work. It is not possible for us to monitor project works of all students," admitted Prof D. N. Reddy, the ViceChancellor of JNTU-Hyderabad. He added that unless the government brings in stringent norms like ordering closure of colleges which resort to such things, the menace could not be checked.