Common admission season for all courses needed: Experts

Common admission season for all courses needed: Experts

Ragu.Raman@timesgroup.com

Chennai:04.05.2021

Educationists and academicians demand a common admission window for all courses to avoid delay in admissions and seat wastage every year. At present, admissions to arts, science courses, medical, engineering, veterinary and other courses are being held separately from June to October.

Arts and science colleges, which have early intake, witness huge dropouts after admissions to professional courses and even top engineering colleges are seeing up to 500 vacant seats after medical and dental counselling. Colleges feel a common admissions schedule can bring down the number of seats left vacant every year.

“Having different statutory bodies and admissions at different times is a great disadvantage for arts and science colleges,” said Thomas Amirtham, principal of Loyola College. “Arts and science colleges complete the admission process by July or August. But students discontinue their courses in September or October saying they got admissions to engineering, dental or agriculture courses. By that time, arts and science universities wrap up admissions and the seats these students give up are left vacant,” he said, adding that admissions could be done in a two to three months window for all courses.

Every year, after the medical counselling and veterinary counselling, around 300 seats from Anna University’s four campuses are left vacant. These seats cannot be filled after the counselling process.

Students and parents are also financially affected as many colleges do not reimburse the first sem fees paid to secure the admission.

“It is always good to have a national-level calendar of events for academic institutions. It will help students aspiring to join institutions across the country to plan,” said S P Thyagarajan, former vice-chancellor of University of Madras. “Due to the pandemic, there could be delays in admissions as Class XII exams have been postponed. It is better to have national-level scheduling to avoid confusion,” he said.

Deemed universities wanted Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) counselling for IITs and centrally funded technical institutions to be restricted to just four rounds. “Setting admission calendar with eight rounds of JoSAA, which constitutes only 5% of engineering seats in the country, jeopardizes the remaining 95% as many seats fall vacant after the admission process is over,” said S Vaidyasubramaniam, vice-chancellor of SASTRA.

Anna University former vice-chancellor E Balagurusamy, however, had a different view and said a common academic window for all courses at all India level is not necessary. “All centralised institutions such as IITs, NITs, central universities may have a common admission schedule while other institutions can have a schedule at state level,” he said.

Arts and science colleges complete the admission process by July or August. But students discontinue their courses in September or October saying they got admissions to engineering, dental or agriculture courses

THOMAS AMIRTHAM

Principal Loyola College