new delhi this year a record 7 lakh students sat for the all india engineering entrance examination competing for over 9000 seats in engineering colleges across the country last year the number was 58 lakh while the year before it was 36 lakh the great rush for engineering continues but for how long and at what cost there are over 1400 engineering colleges in the country offering more than 5 lakh seats of which over 85 are private colleges and such is the demand that parents are willing to pay lakhs to get admission into the socalled open seats however the number of students successfully passing out from these colleges declined from about 70 in 2002 to 57 in 2005a few other facts indicate the chaotic situation prevailing in this sector despite the mad rush several thousand seats go vacant in engineering colleges thus in 2006 over 47000 seats were left vacant in 7 states also every year thousands of seats are derecognised by the all india council for technical education aicte the top regulatory body for noniit engineering educationdeclining passout rates and periodic derecognition are a direct result of the unregulated growth of colleges at the top of the heap are the 9 iits then come the 19 national institutes of technology formerly known as the regional engineering colleges recs these top two layers are government run then we have the rest of the colleges mostly privateaccording to indian national academy of engineering inae a top professional body the mushrooming of private colleges without any regulation in quality has led to a deterioration of standards and skill levels in most colleges fresh btech graduates are working as lecturers aicte estimates that there are only 7000 phds and 20000 mtechs working as teachers while btechs number nearly 1 lakhvacancies in college seats are a result of a combination of factors colleges with a notsogood faculty and infrastructure are not preferred courses like it are preferred more over say agricultural engineering in addition seats reserved for scst often go vacant derecognition occurs because colleges initially meet the minimum conditions required for getting aicte approval but later fall backthese conditions include faculty strength qualification infrastructure among others actually aicte only provides the minimum standard for approval the real test is accreditation by the national board of accreditation nba which looks at quality of education too only about 8 of the engineering colleges are accredited by the nbaover 60 of the engineering colleges are located in tamil nadu andhra pradesh karnataka and maharashtra since most industries are located in these states absorption rates are better there may be a similar concentration within a state for instance most of the 236 up engineering colleges are located in the industrial districts of ghaziabad and noida according to arun arya a second year student in ghaziabad i have come from lucknow to study here because placement possibilities are betterhowever employment may not at all be commensurate with qualification several engineers can be found doing data