Engineering students from colleges located in rural parts of the state are responding poorly to centralised placements organised by the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) Belagavi. This is despite the 165 centralised placement drives, that have been conducted by the university in the last two years that managed to place around 3,500 students at various companies.

The students from rural colleges are not turning up for the drives. In all the 165 drives, no student from rural engineering colleges took part in even 120 drives.

Officials who are taking care of the centralised placement drive at the university said that, despite the drives being organised keeping rural colleges students in mind, they are not taking part. "As the companies aren't showing interest in organising placement camps at rural colleges, we are organising centralised drives through the university, but even for that, rural college students aren't turning up," said an official of VTU.

According to VTU officials and placement officers at private engineering colleges in the city, one of the main reasons for rural college students not showing interest is lack of communication skill. "This is what we got to know by interacting with students. They are not confident about clearing some levels of tests conducted by the companies during the placements. It is mainly due to lack of communication skill," mentioned officials.

Considering this, the university has made it mandatory to study English as one of the subjects in engineering courses from the current academic year. Even dedicated drives for girl students have been planned from the current academic year.