Chandigarh, July 8
“Bring five new students and get Rs 25,000 as prize money.” This is the incentive that some engineering colleges in Punjab offer to their teachers. There is also a warning: 'Failing, you can lose your job'. This perhaps underlines a new trend: while the Punjab Technical University boasts of 108 colleges under its wing, the seats it offers seem to go abegging.

Figures say it all: out of the 32,789 seats available after counseling this year, the number of students allotted seats in the first round is only 10,146 — almost one-third of the total seats.

The admission graph of PTU engineering colleges seems to be falling with each passing year: the AIEEE top ranker this time in a PTU college is one with a 13,389 all-India rank, nearly 3,000 down than the last year.

"The colleges sustaining themselves through donations all these years may as well see it as the end of the road," says an engineering college principal.

A sharp rise in the number of private engineering colleges and placement problems faced by the pass-outs appear to be the main factors leading to vacant seats.

This is borne out by the fact that 69 per cent of engineering seats in Punjab remained vacant after the first round of the joint online counselling conducted by the PTU.

Dr MS Saini, director of Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, said the Centre should put a tab on the mushroom growth of engineering colleges.