WEIGHED DOWN: Increasing worries for Plus-Two students. — File photo: S.R. Raghunathan

CHENNAI: One after the other, complications in the admission to professional courses — engineering, medical and para-medical — seem to be increasing this year.

The first was the legal tangle over whether the admission will be based on a Common Entrance Test for all students. Tussle over recognition of degrees offered by some of the deemed universities followed. Now the managements of private self-financing colleges are up in arms, rejecting the State Government's suggestion to surrender 50 per cent of their seats to the common pool for admission through the Single Window System.

Worries increase

All these are bound to increase the worries of Plus-Two students, who are now taking their Board examinations, and their parents. The legal complication over the conduct of the Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examinations (TNPCEE) may begin to clear after March 27, when the Supreme Court hears the State Government's Special Leave Petition against the High Court order striking down its decision to exempt the State Board students from the TNPCEE.

Deemed varsities

A group of deemed universities have also gone to court over the circular/advertisement of the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) that all engineering courses have to be approved and recognised by it. The deemed universities claim to be under the University Grants Commission and not the AICTE. Students of some of these institutions staged protests over possible de-recognition of degrees to be awarded to them. Such a controversy, academics warn, has the potential to influence students against joining deemed universities that refuse to let the AICTE inspect their campus and recognise the courses.

The managements of some top private self-financing engineering college managements, who turned down the government suggestion to offer 50 per cent of their seats to the common pool, are emboldened by a string of Supreme Court judgments. They claim judicial backing to not only retain all seats for admission on their own, but also to conduct their own CET. Their stand has raised a far greater controversy and debate than the other issues. It has the potential to limit the Government's quota and common pool to just about 5,000 seats, just as the TNPCEE for the Central Board students alone would do. About 70,000 seats will remain at the discretion of the private colleges.

Anna University sources assure The Hindu that the situation "will not be so bad." They say many of the private colleges, especially from the western region, have conveyed their readiness to offer 50-70 per cent of their seats to the government quota. But they feel admission to these institutions "lacks transparency." Neither their CET nor the manner in which admissions are made has inspired confidence in the past.

Jayaprakash Gandhi, a Salem-based analyst, notes: "If the private colleges refuse to surrender 50 per cent of their seats to the government pool, it is the poor and rural students who will suffer.

Those who get seats in good colleges may not be able to afford the capitation fee they charge under some head or even the exorbitant tuition fees."

Panels functioning

He says the Government must assert itself. The same Supreme Court judgments have empowered the State Government to monitor, through committees, the admission to private colleges and the fee structure.

The two committees, headed by retired High Court judges, are functioning and the Government only has to get them cracking. Steps to enforce their orders and decisions will have to be initiated by the Government to ensure that the prescribed fee structures are followed. Admissions have to be made on a merit-based transparent system, with a CET and a single window system. "If they want to go by the Supreme Court ruling, it comes as a whole package," Mr. Gandhi explains.

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