Over 45,000 engineering seats may remain vacant in Tamil Nadu despite record enrolment, ETEducation

Chennai: Even as the Tamil Nadu Engineering admissions (TNEA-2025) began with a record-breaking enrolment of over 3.02 lakh students, more than 45,000 engineering seats under the state’s single-window admission system are expected to remain vacant this year.

The tentative allotment list for the third and final round of counselling was released on Sunday, revealing the scale of vacancies in colleges across the state.

According to sources in the Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE), 28,896 students from the general category received provisional allotments in the first round of counselling. The second round saw 62,289 students allotted seats, including the government school students who availed the 7.5 per cent horizontal reservation.

“In the third round, 64,629 students were given tentative allocations after supplementary counselling,” said T. Purushothaman, who is in charge of TNEA.

Based on these figures, a total of around 1.55 lakh students received seat allotments across all three rounds this year — provisional in the first two rounds and tentative in the third.

Officials noted that the number of sanctioned seats had been increased this year. “The Higher Education Department approved more seats for Anna University and its affiliated colleges under the single-window system — over 2.02 lakh seats compared to last year’s 1.80 lakh,” a senior DoTE source said.

Despite the rise in sanctioned seats and record initial registrations, the final allotment figures suggest that demand has not kept pace with capacity, leading to the large number of vacancies.

The final admission numbers for 2025 will only be known after the supplementary counselling session, which is meant for students who passed the Class 12 supplementary examinations held between June and August 26.

The TNEA, conducted annually by DoTE, remains the primary route for engineering aspirants in Tamil Nadu to secure seats in government, government-aided, and self-financing colleges affiliated to Anna University.

While the single-window system is designed to ensure transparency and streamline the process, officials admit that filling the growing number of sanctioned seats remains a challenge, particularly in rural and lesser-known institutions.

Educationists have called for a review of engineering seat approvals in the state to better align with actual demand, as well as measures to improve the appeal of engineering courses to students, especially in emerging fields where job prospects are higher.

–IANS

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