The last two years’ trend, show us the complete shift of students’ interest from Engineering to Arts stream. As per the HRD Ministry, the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) has seen a dip in the application of students to 12,07,057 (in the year 2016) from 12,34,760 (in the year 2015) and 12,90,028 (in the year 2014). The drop in the number of candidates for engineering clearly depicts that Art stream is a popular choice for more and more students.

Facts and figures

The fall in the number of JEE candidates also speaks that how popular unconventional studies are these days that have taken aback millions of students to humanities and arts. According to the reports, there is a significant rise in the number of students opting for arts at 10+2 level all across India in the academic year 2014-15. Also, over 50 lakh students opted for arts stream as compared to 39.89 lakh in the previous year. 16% rise in the number of students choosing science. Around 32.34 lakh opted for the stream compared to 27.96 lakh in 2013-14.

Reason for shift of interest

The decreasing interest in science and engineering course evidently represents that the students are not fond of the teaching of science subject at their school level. May be that is the reason why they are inclining towards arts courses or any other unconventional subjects. Academicians also believe that students these days are more willing to study Economics and mathematics, which are available in humanities too. Also, appearing in JEE is the reason for the drop of students opting out science subjects as it is considered one of the toughest all India level entrance exam to get admissions in the engineering colleges. However, for admissions in arts/ humanities colleges, students do not have to write any competitive/ entrance exam. Admissions are straight away done on the merit basis.    

Another reason for opting arts courses are the myriad career options available other than being doctors and engineers. Also, the past cases of recession led chucking out of the engineers have discouraged many students to opt for the pure science stream.

The drop in the number of engineering candidates have created concerned among all IITs and other engineering colleges too. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and wait for the government and the IIT council to take imperative measures to attractive a lot many applications of engineering aspirants in the next year’s JEE to come at par with humanities stream.