agra about 32 private engineering and management colleges of uttar pradesh affiliated to apj abdul kalam technical university are ready to down their shutters for want of students according to officials these colleges have applied for closure following a massive decline in the enrollment of students the number of applications for such closures has been steadily rising over the last three years from 12 in 201516 to 19 in 201617 and 32 now officials said these 32 colleges had seats for about 60007000 students and their annual fee ranged between rs 55000 and rs 80000 per student there about 592 technical and engineering colleges in the state including 16 government colleges catering to nearly 286 lakh students talking to toi deputy registrar of aktu ak shukla refused to go into the reasons for the closure applications on the plea that the university administration only provides noobjection certificates after verifying details and the decision to accept or reject the application rests with the all india council of technical education aicte pranav jain director of operations of roorkee engineering and management technical institute muzaffarnagar who has applied for closure said last year we managed to fill only 22 of the 400 available seats in btech the situation is worse this year and we have no option but to shut down the college the decline in enrollments has been going on for the past four years shailendra singh director of hindustan institute of technology and management agra told toi that the issue was one of demand and supply the number of colleges are now more than the students applying for admissions and thus these colleges have become difficult to operate he said adding that even job placement of majority of the colleges are low singh said his institute opened in 1999 and last year there were no enrollments he said that once their closure is approved third year students would be shifted to another institute run by the group secretary of bon maharaj engineering college mathura namdev sharma said his institute has been running for the past 10 years but for the last 4 years most of the seats have been vacant many parents prefer to send their children to metros than to local colleges he said a senior official of technical education department in lucknow said private colleges treat education as business if they suffer losses in one course they shut it down and open another right now the new craze is pharmacy after the government made it mandatory for chemists to have a degree this year 48 colleges have applied for affiliation for a pharmacy degree course and 290 for diploma courses