2020 admissions to engineering diploma courses up by 10% over 2019

PUNE The admission process for various diploma courses under the state technical education department have been completed for this year (2020-21) and there has been an increase of 10 per cent in the overall admissions as compared to last year (2019)

PUNE The admission process for various diploma courses under the state technical education department have been completed for this year (2020-21) and there has been an increase of 10 per cent in the overall admissions as compared to last year (2019).

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Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, students have opted for various engineering diploma courses and confirmed their admissions in government polytechnic, government-aided and non-aided colleges.

Also, the trend of engineering diploma admissions mostly favoured Computer Science, Information Technology and Electronics streams.

There was not much demand for the traditional engineering diploma courses, like the mechanical stream, this year.

This year, across the state, at least one lakh students had applied for various diploma courses like engineering, pharmacy, hotel management and surface coating technology.

Of these 80,000 students filled up the option form during the process and were allocated colleges in the two main rounds held this year.

“It was a tough year for everyone due to the Covid-19 pandemic and so it was for the diploma admission process. The entire admission process, right from application, documents uploading and verification, seat allotments and confirmation and fee payment, everything was done online this year. Due to the combined efforts of our officials the outcome was a 10 per cent increase in the total number of admissions for various diploma admissions in the Pune region,” said D V Jadhav joint director of state technical education Pune region.

In the Pune region, there are five districts – Pune, Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara and Solapur.

This year for all the streams of engineering diploma a total of 38,145 seats were allotted, of which 21,177 students were admitted to institutes and colleges in the Pune region. Similarly for pharmacy, hotel management and surface coating technology diploma courses, the total intake was of 8,131 seats, for which 7,799 students confirmed their admissions.

“This year we were more focused and critical about the admission in the government polytechnic colleges and government-aided colleges, as for each student we have a yearly expense of around ₹1 lakh, but we take fees of only ₹7,000 from the student. If the seat remain vacant then these funds go to waste, so we were focused to fill the admissions,” added Jadhav.

Talking about this year’s trend of students taking admissions in the engineering diploma courses he said, “If we look at the overall admissions done for the engineering diploma courses, a majority of students have given their first preference to computer science, followed by information technology and electronics. There is a slight fall in the mechanical diploma admissions this year, but there is a fluctuation every year in admissions.”