Unscrupulous admissions: AICTE warns professional colleges

2008
By Syed Akbar
Hyderabad, July 2: Reacting sharply to unscrupulous college managements going in for admissions even before the release of the official schedule, the All-India Council for Technical Education has warned of penal action against such educational institutions if they did not stop admitting students illegally. Several professional colleges in the State, particularly those under minority managements, have started their own admission schedule in violation of the AICTE guidelines. These colleges are targeting students who secured low ranks in EAMCET or failed to qualify in the entrance test. Such students are being admitted under the so-called management or NRI quota.
The State government has not yet announced the admission schedule as it is awaiting the BC Commission report on quota for backward classes among Muslims. Once the report is out, the government will come out with an Ordinance to implement the quota for certain traditional groups in the minority community.
Only after this, the government is likely to announce the regular admission schedule for professional courses. The AICTE has taken a serious note of unofficial admissions in professional colleges and described it as nothing short of “commercialisation of education. The AICTE has issued orders to technical institutions and universities imparting technical education to ensure that strict official admission scheduled is adopted by all those concerned.
“It has come to the notice of the AICTE that technical institutions and universities including deemed to be universities, are admitting students to technical education programmes long before the actual starting of an academic session. They are also collecting full fee from the admitted students and retaining their school/institution’s leaving certificates in the original,” says AICTE member secretary Dr K Narayana Rao in his circular.
Some of these institutions are confiscating the fee paid if students fail to join by the date fixed by them. This is also against the AICTE guidelines. There are also instances of managements detaining certificates of students in a bid to forcibly retain the admitted students. Moreover, the time-limit for students to join the courses/programmes is also being advanced in some cases unrealistically so as to pre-empt them from exercising other options of joining other institutions of their choice.
The AICTE guidelines state that if a student withdraws before the starting of the course, the wait-listed candidates should be given admissions against the vacant seat.
“The entire fee collected from the student, after a deduction of the processing fee of not more than Rs.1000 should be refunded and returned by the institution/ University to the student withdrawing from the programme,” he said.
The AICTE said it would take penal action including cancellation of the recognition if the managements continued to violate its guidelines on admissions and fee structure.