The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Interest in India’s MTech courses has been on the decline, with data from All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) showing that nearly two of every three MTech seats in India’s engineering colleges lie vacant.
This pattern of decline has persisted even as total postgraduate seats have decreased by a third since 2017-2018, reported The Indian Express.
According to the data, MTech admissions have fallen to a seven-year low of 45,000 students over the last two academic years. This phenomenon is in sharp contrast to increasing enrolments for BTech, with experts blaming this on factors including lack of value addition from an MTech degree, disconnect between the curriculum and industry requirements and no significant advantages in terms of salaries.
The data shows that seven year back, postgraduate engineering and technology programmes across the country had 1.85 lakh seats, of which only 68,677 were filled, with 63 per cent seats being vacant.
The vacancy rate increased to 64 per cent in 2023-24, even as the total number of MTech seats shrunk by 33 per cent to 1.24 lakh in response to declining demand, with only 45,047 students pursuing the degree.
“There is no interest in postgraduate studies, and it is a concern. Students are not finding much difference in salaries offered after postgraduation, compared to what they might get after completing BTech,” said AICTE Member Secretary Rajive Kumar.