The Telangana state government is said to be moving towards abolition of Engineering, Agriculture and Medical Common Entrance Test (EAMCET), being conducted for admission into professional colleges. Since last two years, this idea is moving among government circles as the number seats available for admission into engineering courses are more than number of qualified students for admissions. As a result, every year large number of engineering colleges failing to get required number of students for admission.
Moreover, managements of private engineering colleges are also brining pressure on the government to scrap this admission test, which has been creating hurdles to fill up seats in their colleges. The capacities of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) for conducting this test were also questioned this year, as it was forced to conduct test as many as three times, due to allegations of large scale irregularities.
As an alternate, the state government is considering to follow the Tamil Nadu model of giving direct admissions in medical and engineering courses based solely on intermediate marks. However, it is known that in Tamil Nadu among over 4,500 engineering colleges over 500 are only under private management and the remaining are under government management, where as in both Telugu states colleges under government management are very few.
It may be recalled that the concept of EAMCET was introduced in 1985 when seats in engineering and medical courses in undivided AP were only in hundreds while about 60,000 students used to take the exam. Now, the number of seats has surpassed the number of students in engineering courses, though there is some shortage of medical seats. But even this gap would be filled soon as more and more entities are coming forward to set up medical colleges. In this scenario, government is of the view that there is no point in conducting EAMCET.
However, the standards of Intermediate examinations are in question, many experts are worrying already diluted engineering course standards would be further pushed to low making engineering graduates unfit for jobs in reputed organisations.
