In 2017, over 55,000 seats at various colleges in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) were lying vacant after 11 rounds of admission including the special rounds.
After the state education department added 10,000 seats to junior colleges in Mumbai with 14 new institutes this year, concerns are now being raised about granting permission to new colleges even as thousands of seats in the existing colleges lie vacant every year.
In 2017, over 55,000 seats at various colleges in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) were lying vacant after 11 rounds of admission including the special rounds.
With such a high number of vacancies, questions are being raised about permissions for additional seats and new colleges for the coming academic year.
As per the data shared by the office of the deputy director, over 3 lakh seats are up for grabs across 800 city colleges for the academic year 2018-19.
Vaishali Bafna from education think tank SYSCOM said that the government should consider approving unaided divisions when there are already so many vacancies every year.
"On the one hand, seats for popular colleges remain as is, while new colleges are given permissions in areas where there are already many colleges. The government should realise that by approving new divisions and colleges it is killing the existing seats while serving no purpose," added Bafna.
"The government should first understand where the demand is for more colleges and seats, and only then approve more seats," she said.
Rajendra Ahire, Deputy Director of School Education, said, "Approving more colleges is under the jurisdiction of the government. Since all these colleges meet the requisite criteria, we have added them in the online process."
VACANT SEATS
- In 2017, over 55,000 seats at various colleges in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region were lying vacant
- Over 3 lakh seats are up for grabs across 800 city colleges for the academic year 2018-19.
NUMBER SPEAK
3,01,760 Total no. of seats for 2018-19
800 Total no. of colleges
2,92,090 Total seats for 2017-18
786 Total no. of colleges
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