The great engineering seat sale

By Ashmita Gupta | Express News Service | Published: 05th August 2017 01:23 AM |





Agents of a private college talk to students outside Anna University; (inset) a pamphlet given to students | Martin Louis

CHENNAI: The latest clearance sale in the city is not at T Nagar, the retail hub, but at Guindy, in and around the Anna University premises to be precise. That is where staff and faculty are trying to hard sell vacant engineering seats in their colleges after failing to attract students in the ongoing counselling process.

Their target is students from rural families, and also first generation graduates, who are offered incentives including tuition fee waiver — a substantial relief for poorer families yearning for a professional degree holder.

Agents distribute pamphlets announcing various schemes, where the tuition fee is fixed on the basis of cut-off marks. Students with 180 marks and above, can avail a complete waiver, while those with lesser marks will get a partial waiver based on various slabs. Some calculate this in terms of percentage (25%, 50% and 100% off), while others in actual cash, saying students need to only pay `15,000, `10,000 or nothing, depending on cut-off marks.

That is not all. Such is the persistence of these agents that they even manage to enter the counselling halls pretending to be parents or guardians. Officials in charge of the counselling say many of them have been caught and reported to the local police.

“These are either staff members or professors from colleges that have had no admissions. They mainly target candidates from rural background or first generation graduates who don’t have much knowledge about counselling,” said a Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission official, requesting anonymity.

These agents lure parents with offers of tuition fee waiver, and enter counselling halls along with the students pretending to be parents or guardians. “Students believe they would be benefitted, and agree to have the agents with them as their guardian or parents,” the official said.

In one instance, a candidate was accompanied by an English professor, who claimed to be his brother. “But while the professor kept speaking in English, the candidate, his ‘brother’, did not know how to converse in the language. This raised suspicion, and the truth soon came out,” the official said. The professor was handed over to the local station.

There was also a case where the candidate first claimed the person with him to be his father before addressing him as brother, and that panic was enough for the officials to bring out the truth. In two other cases, agents were locked inside rooms and handed over to police.

Such efforts to fill up the vacant engineering seats are not unusual. The officials have made arrangements for stringent verification before permitting candidates and their companions inside. “However, this year, colleges seem very desperate to get students; such fraudulent activities have increased when compared to last year,” said a official. “It is doubtful how much of these offers are actually real.”

Officials at Kotturpuram police station, where the agents are usually sent to, say no cases have been registered. Instead the agents are let off after a stern warning. The officials at the university are able to keep a close watch on these agents inside their premises, but those outside are beyond their control. There, scores of agents are seen distributing pamphlets that announce offers like discount sales announcements at retail outlets during festival seasons.