ECE seat is being offered at Rs. 6 lakh (inclusive of the four year fee)

A seat in Mechanical Engineering or CSE stream is around Rs. 5 lakh

HYDERABAD: The fear of large number of seats going vacant seems to be haunting private engineering colleges and they are desperate to sell the management quota seats even before the EAMCET ranks are announced.

The result of that is the entry of consultancies that are trying to lure parents and students with ‘good' offers in ‘good' colleges as well as institutions that fail to attract good students.

Parents are being directly approached by representatives of consultancies while text messages are being sent to the mobile phones of students offering them seats under ‘packages'.

Though Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) is being ‘sold' at a higher price there is hardly any difference between the price of ECE, Computer Science Engineering (CSE) or Mechanical Engineering this year unlike the previous years. The ECE seat is being offered at Rs. 6 lakh (inclusive of the four year fee) in a college that can find a place in the 50 to 100 ranks category. A seat in Mechanical Engineering or Computer Science Engineering is around Rs. 5 lakh. The government fixed fee is about Rs. 90,000 per annum for the management quota.

However, colleges with some reputation and sought-after by students, obviously for their infrastructure, faculty and placements are not in the list of these consultants. “It's a new trend. Earlier only a couple of agencies used to work but now the number has increased,” says Kiran Reddy, who is looking for a seat for his brother. “They are luring us with details of faculty and last year's placements,” he says.

A consultant in the business agreed that several colleges are approaching them for sale of seats.

Except the colleges that can find themselves in the top 50 spots of students' choice the remaining are desperately looking for some help from consultancies. Most colleges are willing to give management seats for the convener quota fee rather than letting them go waste.

40,000 additional seats

This year an additional 40,000 seats are likely to be added, that too in top colleges, which have been permitted to increase their seats considerably.

The middle and lower level colleges are worried that they will be badly affected with this increase in seats.

Correspondent of a college in Moinabad agreed that top colleges were happy as they have more management seats to “sell”.

A senior official said this year nearly a lakh seats might go vacant due to increase in seats and rural colleges are definitely worried.