mumbai the dawn of the third millennium marked the golden age of professional education in india hundreds of new institutes came up adding thousands of seats an equal number queued up to grab them a decade on the picture is one of stark contrast in technical professional colleges this year more bschools applied for closure than those that took wing this academic year 94 management colleges have sought consent to shut down in case of engineering colleges many in the southern states which experienced the highest growth in the professional education space are up for sale many more colleges have trimmed programmes branches of engineering or streams in the management course on the academic front the master of business administration programme was once supreme attracting not only those interested in business but also those who wanted to master the tools of management today the overall growth of mba education is negative in the books of the all india council for technical education aicte between 2011 and 2013 the aicte received 231 applications from management colleges wanting to shut down the aicte has okayed about 80 of them a similar story haunts the master of computer application mca coursewhile 84 colleges stopped offering the programme last year only 27 started mca courses for students who choose not to apply to an mca college the decision is a nobrainer with many more engineering seats available now an undergraduate would rather earn a btech degree followed by a twoyear masters than enrol for a bachelors in computer application and back it up with a threeyear mca that would also eat up six yearspoor colleges alive to the problem the aicte has decided to allow colleges to offer a fiveyear dual degree programme and also permit graduates of science bsc computer science and bsc information technology to jump to the second year of the mca course yet the small positive growth in the sector is from the engineering colleges where new institutes are coming up faster than closures taking place largely in andhra pradesh uttar pradesh maharashtra punjab and rajasthan s s mantha aicte chairman said this is a critical phase for the professional education sector professional education must be in line with industry if you dont offer placements students are not going to come colleges in remote india and institutes of poor quality are not getting students there is just one key to attracting students institutes need to be topoftheline there is no payoff in running a bad college but things seem to be looking up as the economy revives we will see a larger pool of applications from colleges wanting to start we have received close to 120 applications from bschools for the next academic year added mantha joining a professional college was once the pinnacle of an indian students career aspirants far outnumbered the seats available so students left with little choice would join anonymous professional colleges but often they were put off by one or more of these three reasons