Fee cap for private engg colleges

The gap may have decreased this year but the number of women preferring engineering is lower than the number of men. Women, figures show, are also choosy about the engineering streams they want. Academics say this could be because of perceived difficulties in handling equipment during the course of study or because they feel pursuing a circuit branch will land them white-collar jobs.While 8,873 women applied for medical counselling against 5,064 men this year; the gap between the two for engineering courses is more than 25,000. This is, however, lower than last year's margin of 30,000.This could be because in our country parents are more willing to give their sons a chance even if they have slightly lower marks, while they prefer sending their daughters to arts and science colleges that cost less,said educational consultant D Nedunchezhiyan.

Preliminary statistics from the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions show that girls prefer circuit engineering branches such as computer science,Electrical Engineering,electronics and communications, electronics and instrumentation and information technology over mechanical or automobile engineering. This year, mechanical engineering has been the most sought-after, with 2,263 men and just 21 women choosing it.Girls score very high marks in the higher secondary board examination and are given the first choice. They choose IT and computer science because the salary is high and because they feel they can work in air-conditioned comfort,said Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College principal K S Babai.

Another trend noticed over the years is that very few candidates prefer joining engineering colleges exclusively for women. The 20 women's engineering colleges in the state have few takers.Placements are a big draw in co-educational institutions, because companies do not indulge in gender discrimination. More and more IT companies feel they need candidates to interact with the other sex for smooth co-operation in the workplace,said educational consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi.