Hyderabad: Once again, the question hangs heavy – will all the engineering seats in Telangana find takers this year? Judging by recent numbers and trends, it doesn’t look likely.
It’s been years since full enrolment happened in B.Tech programmes. Across both convener and management quotas, nearly 12,000 seats remain vacant every cycle. Even just under the convener quota, anywhere from 7,000 to 8,000 seats typically go unclaimed. Not even the popular computer science streams are escaping this pattern anymore. This year seems no different.
Telangana currently has 175 engineering colleges offering a total of 1,18,778 B.Tech seats. Of these, for the 2024–25 academic year, 8,291 core branch seats and 3,625 seats in computer science and allied branches are already marked as vacant.
Adding to that, around 7,000 more seats have been chopped off this cycle. Fourteen colleges applied to convert or increase their intake, but the government shot down those requests. So those seats won’t show up in this year’s admission charts. Which means the total seat count is shrinking even before counselling begins.
Officials are expected to roll out the B.Tech admission counselling schedule within the next week or so.
Meanwhile, students and parents are staring at another headache: fee hikes. The Telangana Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee (TAFRC) is nearly done with its round of inspections, and tuition fees in several colleges are set to jump by 10–15%.
The last fee revision was for the 2022–23 academic year, and that structure expires with the 2024–25 batch. For the upcoming 2025–28 block period, the TAFRC reviewed proposals from 163 colleges looking to hike fees – some by steep margins. Nineteen colleges chose not to submit proposals.
Sources say the state government is digging into the rationale behind these hikes, trying to figure out why the increases are being pushed and whether they’re justified. But fee hikes every three years have become the norm.
So, even as enrolments drop and colleges struggle to fill seats, fee structures are climbing. And with thousands of engineering seats already left hanging, students are left weighing their options – again.