“It has been a month since the Common Entrance Test (CET-2025) counselling for admission to engineering courses for 2025-26 concluded. But, of the 150 seats available in the Computer Science Engineering (CSE) branch in our college, 40 seats are still vacant. Even though the fee for these seats is the same as the government quota seat, no student is coming forward,” lamented the head of a private engineering college in a tier-3 city in the Kalyana Karnataka region.

The principal of a government engineering college in a district neighbouring Bengaluru said, “Even though the government has reduced fees for civil, mechanical and other traditional engineering courses this time, the seats are still vacant.”

In contrast, thousands of engineering seats have been filled in private universities in most of the tier-1 and tier-2 cities of Karnataka, and these institutions have also taken steps to fill additional seats. This has given rise to allegations that “discriminatory policies” being applied by the State government to private universities and government, aided and private engineering colleges are the reason for the huge gap in the filling of engineering seats.

College type Number of Colleges Total seats KEA intake Comed-K intake Management quota Govt engineering/VTU constituent colleges 27 6,495 0 0 0 Govt courses public universities 760 760 0 0 Architecture seats in govt/public university 40 38 0 0 Seats in govt colleges with higher fees 395 395 0 0 Aided engineering colleges 9 2,950 2,773 18 159 Private unaided minority colleges 16 10,680 4,272 3,204 3,204 Architecture seats private unaided colleges 1,390 595 417 347 Architecture seats in private universities 260 103 0 152 Private engineering colleges 150 95,366 42,945 28