Agriculture courses in enrolment crisis: 10 Maharashtra colleges shut, over half seats vacant in 44 institutes
The College of Agriculture, Saralgaon, located in the tribal-concentrated Murbad block on the outskirts of Mumbai, was among the earliest self-financed agriculture education institutes set up in Maharashtra, after the state government opened the sector to private players in 2001. The institute witnessed a steady growth with colleges for other allied programmes including horticulture, food technology, biotechnology and agriculture engineering opened on its premises in the ensuing years.
But today, it’s in dire straits. Barely half of its 120 first-year seats were filled in the 2025-26 admission cycle. The situation is worse at food technology and biotechnology colleges, which have only 19 students apiece. The agri engineering and horticulture sections have already been shut down a couple of years ago, thanks to abysmally low enrolment.
“There just aren’t enough students,” says Nanasaheb Yewale, Director, Yashodeep Samajik Vikas Sanstha, the organisation managing the colleges, adding, “We might close another institute the next year.”
CoAS isn’t alone in this predicament. A large chunk of agriculture colleges, including a few government ones, in Maharashtra – which by far has the highest presence of these institutes – are reeling under the declining demand for the discipline and the large number of vacant seats. In a repeat of a fate that befell many engineering colleges not long ago, several agri institutes in the state are now forced to shut shop. End Blurn
Much like engineering, this situation is largely precipitated by an unchecked proliferation of private institutes looking to cash in on the surge in agriculture aspirants. With government recruitment held up for a long time and limited opportunities available in the private sector, enrolment eventually dipped, leaving the institutes in a state of distress.
BSc Agriculture, BTech: 50% seats vacant in 44 colleges
As the admissions for nine UG programmes ended for the current academic year, 13,897 of 16,829 (almost 82%) of available spots were shown to have filled. While this is an improvement over the last few years, at one point of time, in 2017-18, almost all of 15,000-odd seats were claimed by the aspirants.
However, this only shows part of the picture. Data accessed by Academia360 reveals a clear disparity in how the demand-supply mismatch affects various colleges. While 86 out of 198 colleges across four state agri universities were able to fill all their undergraduate seats this year, as many as 44 institutes recorded worrying levels – 50% or higher – of vacancies. The vacancies are more pronounced in private institutes, with barely a third of them – 54 out of 151 – recording cent percent enrolment. Six institutes – three of them private agriculture engineering – couldn’t get a single student this year.
As many as 15 out of 47 government run institutes, too, failed to have all their seats filled. Among government institutes with alarmingly high proportion of unclaimed spots are an agriculture business management (ABM) college in Beed district (77% vacancy) and the state’s sole community science college in Parbhani (58% vacancy).
While the vacancies persist across the state, the constituent and affiliated colleges of Dr. Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth (BSKKV), Dapoli (Ratnagiri) have recorded the lowest enrolment. Only 57% of 2,023 UG seats in the university’s 25 colleges are taken this year. BSKKV’s territorial jurisdiction spreads over six districts along the state’s coastline.
The colleges running allied programmes, especially the three BTech programmes in agricultural engineering, biotechnology and food technology, have been registering a relatively higher share of unclaimed seats than those with the flagship BSc agri course. This has led to the closure of at least 10 colleges in the last two years, including six of 15 agri engineering institutes – one horticulture, one biotech, one food technology and one ABM college being the others.
Private BSc agriculture colleges, low enrollment
According to a former official at the Maharashtra Council for Agricultural Education and Research (MCAER), the state regulator for agri education, the large-scale vacancies are a result of the unabated mushrooming of colleges.
“In 2019, the council had prepared a prospective plan for agriculture education in the state. The exercise concluded that we have 60 more than the required number of agri colleges in the state. Of around 30,000 graduating out of agri institutes around the country, roughly half are from Maharashtra. While it was estimated that every year around one lakh opportunities emerge for agriculture graduates nationwide, only a fraction of those are available in Maharashtra,” he said.
Despite this alarm and the drop in agriculture enrolment, the state continued to permit newer institutes. In the last two years, the count of private BSc agri colleges has increased from 78 to 91 even as the existing institutes continued to face vacancies. While some of the new institutes, especially those affiliated to Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth (MPKV), Rahuri, and Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, Akola, have largely managed to fill their quota of seats, others affiliated to BSKKV Dapoli and Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth (VNMKV), Parbhani recorded below par admissions.
“The new colleges were approved without any consideration. Despite low demand in Konkan, new institutes were permitted in the region. They admitted only a handful of students,” said Yewale.
Another factor for the relatively low enrolment in Konkan colleges is the university quota, which requires that 70% of seats at colleges affiliated to a particular university be exclusively filled with students hailing from the varsity’s respective territory. Thanks to a smaller number of agriculture aspirants in the region, the colleges are unable to fill their kitty.
“This year, there were only 680 applicants for around 1,400 UG university quota seats under BSKKV Dapoli. Some of them must have opted for other courses, leaving an even smaller pool for us,” said Sunitkumar Patil, principal at Sharadchandraji Pawar College of Agriculture, Chiplun (Ratnagiri).
The colleges have been petitioning the government to do away with the university quota. They have also demanded that the qualifying criterion of minimum 45% class 12 should also be waived. But so far no change has been made.
Agriculture courses, without Biology
As for the technical agriculture colleges, a confluence of factors has contributed to their woes. The trouble began in 2018 when the admission rules were changed to allow the candidates choosing mathematics but not biology in Class 12 to also pursue most of the agriculture courses as well as bachelor of pharmacy (BPharm). Earlier, only select agriculture courses, namely agriculture engineering, community science and forestry, besides the regular BE/BTech were available to these candidates.
The change prompted many of these students to opt for BPharm or BSc (Agri) courses instead of BTech agri. The exponential growth in pharma education institutes in the state also caused some of the students to steer away from agriculture. The Covid-19 induced learning loss also meant that the students would go for ‘non-mathematics’ streams rather than the ones involving maths.
“While earlier only a limited options were available to mathematics candidates, they could now take up BSc agriculture, a course perceived to be relatively easier. And since, most of the agri graduates aspire for government jobs, it makes sense to choose the more conventional programme,” said Sumit Rathod, principal of Sahyadri College of Agricultural Engineering, Karad (Satara), another institute that has stopped admitting students.
Agriculture engineering curriculum
Rathod also blamed the agriculture engineering curriculum for its diminishing popularity. “The course includes parts of both agriculture and engineering, without making students specialise in either. The state’s syllabus is heavily oriented towards theoretical learning, with little emphasis on practical training. Hence, agriculture graduates have a hard time finding jobs in production and research and development (R&D). The only opportunities available to them is in marketing, which they aren’t very keen to do,” he said.
The agriculture engineering graduates also find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to government jobs. In 2023, agriculture engineering students went on a strike after the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) changed the pattern for the Maharashtra Agriculture Service Exam, reducing the proportion of questions related to their subjects. The change, according to the protesters, favoured students in the traditional agriculture programme at the expense of those enrolled in the professional course.
Other reasons include lack of awareness about the scope of technical agriculture programmes and the high cost of running them. Patil said that they were compelled to shut their biotechnology college two years ago as its enrollment kept shrinking.
“We couldn’t run the institute, as it needs costly equipment and chemicals. In fact the expenditure on a batch of 25 biotech students is higher than that for an agriculture class of 180,” said the principal. “With the population on the rise and land holdings shrinking, biotechnology is key to generating high yield on small patches of land, many don’t find any immediate use to it,” he adds.
The experts insist that while there are opportunities available for agriculture graduates in the private sector, they continue to eye the ever shrinking pie of public sector opportunities. Hence, many of the agriculture industry jobs are scooped up by diploma holders, who are content with their limited compensation and gradual growth ladder. “Once someone becomes a graduate, they are not satisfied with the RS 20,000 per month jobs. They only eye the lucrative government posts,” said the former MCAER official.
With the state agriculture recruitment virtually frozen after 2016, the agriculture graduates now hope that they will be roped in to teach agriculture in schools. “With agriculture now being introduced as a mandatory subject in state schools, our graduates should be given priority over those doing DEd,” said Yewale.