Arts and Science colleges in the region are apparently having their fingers crossed as the admissions for PG programmes, particularly M.Sc. Mathematics, Physics, Zoology/Botany and Chemistry, are on continuous decline every passing year.Colleges in the rural parts where even UG seats are not filled entirely are the most affected, according to college heads.The preference of students to take up jobs after their UG degrees is the major reason for the decline in PG admissions, a principal of a self-financing arts and science college said.Barring specific programmes such as MBA, M.Com, M.Sc. Information Technology and M.Sc. Computer Science, filling seats in the rest of the PG programmes is turning out to be a tough task, the college head observed.The trend seems to be the same in government arts and science colleges as well, despite the fee structure being much lesser.Irrespective of the subject, not more than 10 to 20% of the students in UG programmes intend to pursue post-graduation, a senior professor of Government Arts and Science College, Coimbatore, said.Some of the self-financing colleges and Government-aided colleges of long standing, however, manage to fill most of the PG seats, due to the reputation accruing from academic rating.In most colleges, the number of female students far outnumber males in the PG programmes.The trend is similar in the engineering colleges. Even top-tier colleges are learnt to be facing difficulty in filling the full quota of seats for the M.E. programmes. Published - July 17, 2026 09:47 pm IST