Agriculture colleges not in favour of opening new institutions

Tamil Nadu currently has more than 40 agricultural colleges with at least 30 of them being self-financing institutions.

The managements of agricultural colleges in an effort to ensure that they do not meet the same fate as private engineering institutions, which struggle to fill up their seats, sources revealed that the agricultural institutions wanted to make the optimum use of the demand for agricultural courses without any competition.

“At present it is one agriculture college per district and opening of more institutions can result in stiff competition,” the source said. Though attempts were made to contact government officials for their views, no one responded on the matter.

The limited number of seats at present has reportedly resulted in colleges, even newly established ones, demanding high capitation fee from candidates in Vellore district, the source added.

The Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) University plans to start a four-year BSc (honours) course in Agriculture from the current academic year.

“We have received an overwhelming response for this course as over 2,000 have submitted their applications,” said VIT Chancellor G Viswanathan.