More than 65% MBA seats in Tamil Nadu to go vacant

Ram Sundaram

Chennai:





Declining Job Prospects The Main Reason 

 

Demand for MBA seats, one of the sought after until a decade ago, continues to nose-dive in Tamil Nadu. More than 9,000 seats, or 65% of the total seats under the state government quota, are set to go vacant this year.

 

A total of 4,700 candidates are part of the single-window counselling for 13,710 seats across 317 colleges, said T Purushothaman, secretary of TN MBAMCA Admissions 2017.On Tuesday , day one of the counselling, one-fourth of the invited candidates absented themselves. The fall in demand, experts say , is mainly due to the declining job prospects and inadequate number of government colleges offering the course. This is despite government toning down the difficulty level of the entrance test since 2013, when a sharp drop in the number of admissions was recorded.

“Only a handful of MBA graduates, particularly those from premier institutions, manage to secure a decent job.Others either become jobless or settle for low-paying jobs `20,000,“ said A M Na `18,000-` (` tarajan, chief executive of Erode-based Bannari Amman Institute of Technology . A government college principal from Chennai said mushrooming of private institutions in recent years has degraded quality of the course and it was high time authorities identified and shut down low-performing ones.

Rank list for counselling is based on Tamil Nadu Common Entrance Test (TANCET) scores. “Though the government has toned down the difficulty level of the test of late, the number of students getting admitted to MBA under the state government quota has not increased,“ said A Muthu Krishnan of Chennai-based coaching institute Ascent Education.

Most candidates, particularly moderate and slow-learners, do not complete the test on time, he said. “Unlike other competitive tests, in TANCET 100 questions are to be answered in 120 minutes.“ Even MCA seats have fewer takers. Of the 12,000 seats available, only 784 got filled.