The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : A sigh of relief for parents, students

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 09, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

A sigh of relief for parents, students

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI, SEPT. 8. Parents and students heaved a sigh of relief on Wednesday, as Justice Prabha Sridevan of the Madras High Court decided that the concept of `single-window system' of admissions would not apply to `management quota seats' in unaided engineering colleges.

Essentially the order means: For colleges, it will be a method to formalise the `admissions' they have made tentatively. For parents, it is much less of hassle. They can admit their wards to colleges where "they have booked seats."

The order will pave the way for early start of the already delayed academic year. For the past six months, students have been sitting at home, as the grown-ups matched wits, power and money in battles inside and outside court halls.

The students last attended the formal classroom in February just before Class XII examinations began. Their academic classes should have begun in mid-July, but as the management quota seats became a legally contentious issue the start of the academic year got postponed.

Even now, it seems it would take another fortnight for actual classes to begin in the unaided colleges, although the sessions have begun in Anna University's constituent colleges as also in government and aided institutions.

When contacted for their reaction, the managements were predictably satisfied. Their contention is that the Government or the university need only to look at quality in education. Ms. Babai, administrative head of the Meenakshi Sundararajan Engineering College, Chennai, notes: "Quality is an issue that is decided by students. They have the ability to differentiate among different types of institutions as was seen in the way the single-window admissions for government quota seats went."

Common entrance test

About 170 colleges chose to opt for the common entrance test (CET) conducted by the Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges.

Most of the other institutions which opted to admit candidates based on the scores in the Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examinations also feel relieved by today's order, as the admissions they made are also now formalised.

The consortium president, Jeppiaar, said it would now upload the relevant application form on its web site "www.tnsfconsortium.org" for the students to fill (by including the Plus-Two and CET scores) and "we will also send applications in the next two days to all member-colleges. The students can fill the applications and send them to the consortium office. Within 10 days, the merit list will be prepared and displayed in all the member-colleges. Based on this, the students can be admitted. This would also apply to minority colleges for those seats not filled with candidates from the same minority community," he said.

Vacancy position

Pointing to the vacancy of over 13,000 (not counting the candidates who attended the SWS after booking a seat in the management quota seats), he said that in the single-window system, the student might not know the college which he or she opted for. "Here the students and parents can visit a college, see the infrastructure for themselves and decide to join or not. And most students make up their minds even before admissions," he adds.

G. Dhirajlal, who served on the Dr. M. Anandakrishnan Committee in 1996-97 that evolved the single-window admissions, has a suggestion: Let the Government form a committee comprising all stakeholders, to start working on the admission modalities for the next year now itself. Perhaps, it could start negotiations with the colleges to revive the old system in which a major chunk of the seats are filled by the Government and the rest of the seats left to the management's discretion.

But even now, there is a hitch. It is possible that a section of students might not have been able to get a seat or college of their choice though they might have scored good marks, because he or she was not even able to buy an application. It is also possible such students may seek legal relief seeking more transparency in the admissions.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu