Bhubaneswar, Aug. 11: Engineering colleges in Odisha appear to be scraping the barrel. The drastic fall in their standards is evident as nearly 90 per cent of the engineering seats filled up so far have been allotted to students who have scored below 40 per cent marks in the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) 2012.

The majority of students admitted to these technical institutes have scores in the range of 10 to 30 per cent in the OJEE — an indication that the colleges are now catering mostly to substandard students. Of the 17,000 odd seats filled up this year, only around 1,900 have been bagged by candidates who have scored more than 40 per cent marks, considered the minimum pass percentage in schools and colleges.

What’s worse, 2,986 candidates with scores less than 10 per cent have got seats. So have 364 who secured negative marks. Interestingly, all these “rank holders”, before the counselling began, got calls and text messages from not less than 40 different institutes wooing them with offers of free laptops, discounts in tuition fees and free hostel accommodation.

In spite of these “desperate” attempts at bettering their admission figures, over 28,000 seats remain vacant this year.

More than 63,000 students were given ranks in the joint entrance exam and were eligible for engineering admissions in the state.

However, the majority of them were found to have gone out of the state, looking for “better” opportunities or had taken admissions in tech colleges under the two private universities here – KIIT and Siksha O Anusandhan University.

Those who had qualified for reputed institutes such as the National Institute of Technology in Rourkela, the National Institute of Science Education and Research and IIT in Bhubaneswar, did not have to think twice before ditching an OJEE engineering seat.

“Students who are not of the quality required to study in industrial training institutes or diploma engineering are pursuing B.Tech. One can well imagine the quality of engineers these colleges have been producing every year,” said R.N. Panda, a senior educationist.

No wonder that at the end of four years, many “engineers” are left with no choice but to take up jobs that pay as low as Rs 8,000 a month. “Students and parents should make a conscious decision and not be misled by marketing agents and their tall claims,” Panda said.

A senior government official said an engineer was required to handle a team of supervisors (generally those who had diplomas in engineering), who in turn, oversaw technicians (industrial training institute graduates). “However, there have been several instances where B. Tech graduates placed as engineers in various companies have failed to handle the responsibilities and ended up losing their jobs,” he said.

The official said engineering colleges had been only concerned with filling up their seats without caring about the quality of students they took in year after year. “The state government had suggested in various meetings for engineering colleges to coordinate with departments of school and mass education as well as higher education to improve the quality of matriculates and Plus Two students through investments. But no one seemed interested,” he said.