AHMEDABAD: Mushrooming of engineering colleges and dilution of the quality of courses has led to a situation where for the first time in the history of the state more than 54% of seats in engineering courses have remained vacant. This happened after 4,267 seats were surrendered back to the ACPC by managments of various institutes. This year in the state there were 63,846 seats in degree engineering against 68,113 in 2017. But the reduction in number of seats couldn’t save the situation.Of the 39,000 students who had applied for admission in engineering to the Admission Committee for Professional Courses (ACPC) 10,000 students didn’t care to turn up. Education experts say that of these 10,000 students, around 1,000 may have taken admission in the NITs and IITs. The remaining may have taken admission in institutes outside the state or may have joined BSc courses. It’s clear no one is ready to enrol in an engineering college or a course without sound reputation, when it comes to career and placements. However, colleges and institutions that offer quality education remain filled.Nehal Shukla, convener of AICTE Approved College Management says, “The government should not approve new colleges as the intake capacity is saturated. For the next three years, the situation will be similar to 2018.” Shukla added, “I feel that due to the delay in starting the admission process students opt for admission in colleges outside the state.”G P Vadodariya, member secretary, Admission Committee for Professional Courses (ACPC) said “The first choice of students are only computer and information technology courses. More than 60% seats are vacant in mechanical engineering and electronic and communication.” “We were expecting more than 30,000 seats to fall vacant as the number of students who had qualified were only 41,000 and of these only 39,000 had applied,” he added.Due to the rise in automation across industries , a demand for computer experts has also gone up. The average package for new graduates in computer and information technology ranges from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 12 lakh per annum, said B V Buddhadev, head of department, Computer and IT, Gandhinagar Government Engineering college. An education expert said, “Every branch of engineering has a choice phase lasting for about five years. Once mechanical and civil engineering were considered top choices. However, due to various reasons, computer engineering and later IT have ruled for past two decades.”