ahmedabad students of gujarat seem to losing interest in professional courses be it engineering master of business administration mba or master of computer application mca the numbers of vacant seats in these courses are increasing with each passing year of the one lakh odd seats in engineering medical and paramedical mba mca and pharmacy around 20 found no takers in 2012 the same figure for 2011 was 1011 the state education department officials fear that higher number of students passing out the number of vacant seats in professional courses could go up to 25 per cent for instance after the first round of admission for bachelor of engineering about 15000 students failed to confirm their admission even though they have filed the forms the craze for science subjects is increasing but if a student does not get his choice he would not enroll a department official said the student would go for nonprofessional course rather than take admission in a less soughtafter branch he added over 68000 students cleared science examination in 2010 in three years this number has increased to 105 lakh students however this jump has seen the number of unclaimed seats also going up in addition the state has registered an increase in about 1015 in the intake capacity of engineering mba and mca colleges an education department official said in 2010 all india council for technical education aicte had increased 11000 professional courses seats in the state of these 6399 seats are in engineering 1380 in pharmacy 1500 in mba and mca and 684 for me all these seats were added in selffinanced colleges even commerce pass outs were taking admission into mba but now the trend is changing as the pay package barring a few mba colleges had gone as low as rs 120 lakh per annum for starter said an official earlier at least 1520 fresh engineers were enrolling for mba courses but this has also changed last year close to 8000 seats went vacant in engineering 3500 seats in pharmacy 6000 seats in mba and 2200 seats in mca colleges whats more even in courses like nursing and physiotherapy over 1000 seats were vacant president of selffinance management association c l patel said the government has its own set of rules and hence students and the management bear the brunt of the wrong policies we have many colleges which have better infrastructure and faculties as compared to best colleges in the state patel said the in engineering and pharmacy courses the vacancies were limited to lesspreferred branches but in mba courses the downward trend was only because of the less job opportunities in the market he added