The Minister of State for Education, Dr Subhas Sarkar, today shared the number of vacant seats in engineering colleges at undergraduate level in the last five years in the Rajya Sabha. Over the course of five years, the total number of seats in engineering colleges have gone down and so have the number of vacant seats. In the year 2021-22, there were 4,21,203 seats vacant out of 12,53,337 which is 33.6 per cent. In the year 2020-21, out of the 12,86,545 total seats, 5,66,538 were vacant which is 44 per cent of the total seats. In 2019-20, there were 13,28,247 seats out of which 5,87,314 were vacant, 44.2 per cent of the total. In 2018-19, a total of 6,78,932 seats were vacant out of 13,95,345 seats, 48.6 per cent. And, in the year 2017-18, there were 7,22,112 vacant seats out of the total 14,65,873 which is 49.2 per cent of the seats. The previous year saw the least number of seats vacant since the last five years. Dr Sarkar further said that there are several factors responsible for the filling up seats including location of the institutes, academic and infrastructural facilities as well as placement opportunities.
