The Journal of Engineering Education July - 2013 54 8. IMBALANCES IN ENGINEERING DISCIPLINES DUE TO DEMAND PERCEPTIONS OF ADMISSION SEEKERS: A SYSTEM DYNAMICS APPROACH Lalit Upadhayay*, **Prem Vrat *ITM University, Gurgaon. 1. Introduction: Indian technical education system, despite being a regulated sector has been dented by unregulated exponential growth. Such a growth is accompanied by many imbalances (Table 1). In the year 2002-2006, technical education system saw a huge surge in the admissions of main circuit branches CSE, IT and ECE whereas, the admissions in civil engineering were very low. The market demand pattern of engineering varied in a span of four years. The admission rates, particularly in the year 2012 and 2013, have been very low for ECE, CSE and IT. Most of the engineering colleges in the year 2012 have shut down engineering streams, mainly computer science and IT, due to poor or no admissions (Times of India, Jan 15, 2013). Abstract: Indian technical education system, since year 1995, has witnessed an exponential growth and as a consequence, is plagued by many imbalances. In this paper we have made an attempt to addresses the demand supply imbalance in the engineering disciplines. Oscillations, amplifications and phase lags are omnipresent in supply chains. System dynamics approach has been used to analyze the time lags and distortions prevalent in the academic supply chain. A system dynamics model is constructed through causal loop diagrams and stock and flow diagrams. For policy analysis, the model is simulated for forty years. The results of the simulation provide some useful insights to the policy makers of technical education. This paper throws a new light on research in technical education by using system dynamics to address the bullwhip effect in an academic supply chain. Keywords: System Dynamics, Technical Education, Academic Supply Chain, Bull Whip Effect, Imbalances The bullwhip effect in manufacturing is a well established phenomenon and has been reported frequently in research. In a ‘Bullwhip effect’, the customer demand is amplified as it proceeds up the supply chain from retailer to wholesale distributor to manufacturer (Figure 1). Therefore, the demand distortions propagate upstream with amplifications at each echelon (Warburghton et al, 2004). Such distortions in a supply chain can lead to inefficiency in the excessive inventory investment, poor customer service, lost revenues, misguided capacity plans, inactive transportation and missed production schedules (Lee at el, 1997). A supply chain is a coordinated system of activities, people, organizations, information and resources involved in moving a product or a service in physical or virtual manner from supplier to the customer (Buchmeister, 2008).