With 187 engineering colleges in the state, 81,432 seats were accessible to students to choose. 70,000 students were eligible through CET. The number of seats has exceeded the number of students, increasing the supply than the demand, but the best students opt for NITs, IITs and other top institutes. Students today are given a lot of choices. They can be seen visiting colleges, researching about facilities provided etc. There are colleges without a single seat occupied through CET and still people want to start new engineering colleges, said Panduranga Shetty, Vice-President, Karnataka Unaided Engineering Colleges' Association. K Balaveera Reddy, founding Vice-Chancellor, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), said, "Granting more colleges is not the issue. In fact, we need more colleges if all the students get into higher education. Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have 600 and 500 colleges each. Karnataka, in that case, has grown steadily. Having fewer students is the problem. Our PU pass percentage is not even 50percent. There was a time when CET was open to non-Karnataka students. We used to get around 50,000 students from outside. Colleges need to improve their facilities. Our state can announce results early to attract students."