BANGALORE: The society is now a little flexible for gender discrimination in educational field. In Tamil Nadu most of the gender specific higher education colleges still have vacant seats.

Out of 38,000 women who have sought admission to engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu (TN), very few have opted for women’s college. Out of 18 women’s colleges in TN, 15 have more than 100 seats vacant. The general academic counseling process will end soon and the co-educational engineering institutions with good brand value are also left with about 450 vacant seats.

According to times of India report the educational consultant Moorthy Selvakumaran said “Even in rural areas, it is only the parents who want their daughters to study in women-only institutions. It does not matter whether the institution is co-educational or exclusive to women. What matters is the quality of the institution and how it has adapted to the times.”

In the last two years some of the women’s colleges have shut down or have converted into co-educational institutions due to poor admission rate. The number of women's engineering colleges in TN has decreased by 25 percent in the last five years. Even the colleges that have taken part in the single window counseling have reduced from 24 to 18 this year.

The All India Council for Technical Education is giving concessions to start women-only technical institutions. The processing fee for women’s college is only three lakh where as a non-minority co-educational institution has to pay five lakh.

According to the academics (When it comes to academics,) women prefer co-educational institutions because they feel the need to adjust to themselves to work alongside the opposite gender.

Nandini Sivaraman, a student who chose a co-educational college to pursue computer science and engineering degree said "We don't want to feel awkward and nervous in getting used to male co-workers when we should be focusing on our career."

She added that she was an only child with no male cousins. She studied in a girls' school for 12 years so if not in the next four years during engineering she would never learn to be comfortable around men.

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