BANGALORE: For the nearly 1,000 professional college seat aspirants and their parents who turned up for The Hindu EducationPlus pre-counselling session on Wednesday, the words of wisdom and guidance by highly qualified and experienced speakers offered several rays of hope.

If chaos and confusion were the hallmarks of the admission process, Wednesday's event was an eye-opener rich in content and direction.

India as an economy was no longer inward looking, and its industries — IT, BT, manufacturing, services, R&D — were now focussed on the global markets. Drawing the candidates' attention to this big change, K. Dinesh, co-founder and director of Infosys Technologies, said industries required candidates with the right abilities to meet these global needs.

Customers were getting more demanding in terms of quality and industry required such candidates. But the colleges did not provide that edge. "We just drop English after II PU. Once they get into the job, they are not able to write even an email with proper grammar and spelling," he said.

He told the students to develop a bent of mind focussed on problem solving.

COMED-K

Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMED-K) executive secretary S. Kumar traced the history of the admissions process over the years, contending that the various court judgments would correct a trend where over 40 per cent of the free seats allotted went to families with annual incomes of Rs. 5 lakh and more.

The Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell, Dr. Kumar agreed, was a role model. But since 2002, the Cell's autonomy had been repeatedly breached by the Government. Today, COMED-K with 1,895 medical, 1,740 dental and 31,469 engineering seats on offer had taken the place of the CET Cell, he claimed.

CET Cell's administrative officer Syed Jamal said only MBBS seats were completely filled every year whether they were processed through the Cell or COMED-K. "Last year, 4,000 engineering seats under government quota and 7,000 under management quota were unfilled. There were no takers for 220 dental seats as well," he said.

The Hindu Bangalore's Chief of Bureau A. Jayaram lamented that it would be most unfortunate if the capitation fee system was back as a norm.

This would affect poor and middle-class families the most, setting the clock back, he said.

C. Murali, chairman, Institute of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers; N. Rajashekar, Regional General Manager, The Hindu , Bangalore; R. Sunil, Regional General Manager (Advt.), The Hindu , Bangalore, and R. Chandrakant, Senior Assistant Editor, The Hindu , Bangalore, also spoke. A handbook on "Careers" was distributed to all the participants. State Bank of Mysore, Garden City College and AMC Educational Institutions were the event sponsors.

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