HYDERABAD: Engineering seems to be losing its sheen among students in Telangana with figures recently presented in the Rajya Sabha revealing that barely half of the number of approved seats was filled between 2014 and 2016.During the same period, the number of institutes had reduced from 404 in 2014 to 377 in 2016, and the approved intake dropped by over 60,000 in Telangana.With over 50 colleges opting out of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University affiliation process and many closing shop from the academic year 2017-18, the number of approved intake is expected to drop further. But industry observers believe the dip in approved intake will have little impact on the trend of rise in number of vacant seats.“There is an absolute imbalance between number of colleges and number of students opting for technical courses. Only if approved intake is cut by 50%, then there are chances of not having a single vacant seat,“ said NLN Reddy , placement officer at Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology To the question posed by minister of state for human resource development Mahendra Nath Pandey if there was any scheme proposed by the government to encourage engineering colleges, the ministry replied, “Since many of these colleges are privately managed, there is no scheme by the government to encourage them.However, to rationalize the expansion of courses in engineering technological, management etc, AICTE has notified mandatory accreditation regulation for institutes seeking new courses expansion of existing courses.“This year some courses in which seats might be reduced in Telangana are under the civil, mechanical and information technology heads in engineering, besides pharmacognosy , pharma chemistry , and pharmacology seats.Experts claim the trend could be attributed to a near-stagnated job market for engineers or a glut of career options for students from non-engineering fields. “ A majority of students graduating from engineering institutes do not have skill set and industry knowledge. Due to this, many of them shift to non-engineering fields,“ said K Dayanand, professor at a private college.