Polytechnic diploma courses see mass failures, dropout spike amid exam overload

Hyderabad: Halfway through the course, most are gone. That’s the story unravelling in Telangana’s polytechnic colleges, where engineering diploma students are dropping out in droves, and those who stay are barely scraping through.

It starts strong. Every year, around 20,000 to 22,000 students enrol in these courses, which promise a fast track to government jobs after Class 10. But by the fifth semester? Fewer than 8,000 are left. Of those, barely 4,000 pass.

First semester’s a bloodbath—70% fail. Second and third, same trend. No bounce-back. Students walk out. The dropout rate is now so high that fewer than half make it to the final certificate.

It’s not just the course load. Many are pointing fingers at how exams are run and papers graded. Whispers turning into allegations—that lecturers are deliberately failing students, that evaluations are careless. Some students want a mid-semester exam scrapped altogether.

In 2022, 22,267 students joined polytechnic courses. Only 7,421 cleared the first semester. By the second, 21,106 were still around—a drop of 1,100. The third semester saw 21,077. Fourth, down to 20,232. But then, the plunge. Just 8,000 left for the fifth semester.

And of those, only half passed.

It’s not hard to see why. The structure’s brutal. Each semester runs for just 90 days. In that window, students take two mid-sems and one end-sem exam. Three exams in three months. Add to that six theory subjects and four labs.

Most students are still teenagers, 15, maybe 16. Barely out of school. Two months after passing Class 10, they’re already failing. Confidence shattered.

Then comes the attendance axe. No minimum attendance, no promotion. Miss more than 35% and you’re detained. Every semester, around 1,800 to 2,000 students are held back because of this.

No breathing room. No breaks. Just relentless testing, erratic evaluations, and a system chewing up the very students it claims to empower.