Hyderabad: Forget private colleges, 30% of engineering seats in universities, which are the preferred choice of many students, have remained vacant this year.

While there are 21 colleges under universities with a total intake of 6,440, as many as 4,482 have been filled, and 1,958 are vacant. Last year, 82.2% of seats at universities were filled. In the Govt Engineering College, Kosgi, only 24.7% of 198 seats have been filled. In the academic year 2024-25, a little over 53% of seats were filled in this college.

“Students and their parents are giving utmost importance to infrastructure and faculty while joining a course, instead of seeing whether it is a private or govt college. While universities such as Osmania University (OU) or Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, have top-class infrastructure, that is not the case with some of the other newly established universities. This might be the reason why even seats in universities are vacant,” said P Chandra Sekhar, principal, University College of Engineering, OU, adding that only a few seats — eight in mining, three in biomedical, and one in mechanical — are vacant after the counselling. He also pointed out that there is a noticeable change in the mindset of students, who earlier used to prefer only computer science or emerging tech courses, as even top rankers opted for conventional branches this year.

In the state, there are a total of 180 engineering colleges with a total of 90,246 seats under the convenor quota. Of these, 76,793 were filled, and 13,453 remained vacant. While private colleges get to convert unfilled convenor quota seats into management or NRI quota, that’s not the case with govt ones. The only options they have are to either make them available for BiPC students, as they too are eligible for some engineering courses such as biomedical, biotech engineering, or for lateral entry students, who join engineering in the second year after completing polytechnic.

While some point out that there are too many seats at undergraduate colleges, including engineering, and cite it as a reason for seats lying vacant, others also said many are preferring to join private universities in the state and elsewhere, as they offer better facilities. “Even some of our top universities do not have proper infrastructure and still have outdated equipment in labs. There is nothing that varsities can do as they too are facing financial constraints because the govt is not releasing fee reimbursement dues. So, many students are looking elsewhere, even if it means they have to shell out lakhs towards fees to get quality education,” said G Nagaiah from the Federation of Associations of Telangana Higher Education Institutions (FATHI).

Officials, meanwhile, said students and their parents prefer only those colleges that are in and around Greater Hyderabad. “We have many deemed and private universities, which have hundreds of seats in CSE and related courses — which are still the first choice of many. Parents are opting for these over govt ones located in other districts that are far away from the city. Further, though three new university colleges were opened this year under Palamuru, Satavahana, and Telangana universities, not many were aware of it. So, some seats in these colleges are also vacant,” said Sriram Venkatesh, secretary, Telangana Council of Higher Education (TGCHE).