There will be no offline First Year Junior College (FYJC) admissions this year, according to deputy director of school education, Mumbai division, B.B. Chavan.
Students need to take up admissions in colleges allotted to them by the online admission process, he said. They tend to wait for offline admissions if they are not satisfied with the colleges allotted to them online. “We are committed to ensuring that the admission process is transparent and hence, the entire process will only be conducted online,” he said. “No one will be left without a college seat in Mumbai and in case they do, we may adjust them while taking in students later in August when the supplementary exam results are announced,” said Mr. Chavan.
So far, the education department has brought out two merit lists, with the final list expected on July 12, at around 5 pm. The third list was supposed to be out by July 11, but the government delayed it by a day to help students who might not have been unable to take admissions due to a delay in the Eid holiday this year.
About 15,000 students failed to take up admissions even after the second merit list was out last week. But the government is confident that they will find a college seat in Mumbai due to the availability of excess seats. “There are more than 48,000 excess seats for First Year Junior College and each of the 2.2 lakh applicants this year should easily get admission. On the contrary, we fear that colleges many face problems of surplus classrooms and excess teachers since they may not be able to fill up all their seats,” he said.
Mr. Chavan believes the online system will pressurise junior colleges to shape up. “We found some 280-seat-capacity colleges for which hardly 6-8 students had shown preferences. Such institutions will automatically be under pressure to improve to attract students, since if few students list them among their 35 preferences, the online system will automatically not send them to these institutions,” he said.
Mr. Chavan blamed the angst amongst students during the admission period to the fact that almost everyone wanted to take admission in just the few of the creamy-layer, 50-odd colleges.
Mumbai region (including Panvel and Kalyan) has 1,468 colleges and the problem of surplus seats is expected to get worse once the polytechnic and diploma courses admissions begin. Students are expected to move out of FYJC colleges towards these courses.
He also said colleges — notably Mithibai College, which attracted 38,895 applicants for just 600 seats — will have to show how they filled up their minority quota. The online admission system was started in 2009 by the education department in a bid to streamline the admission process and reduce corruption and nepotism. However, while the student spends less (officially the online process costs Rs. 50), he or she is not spared confusion. Charkop resident Eunice Jennifer, for instance, secured 82 per cent without attending coaching classes, but the family could not celebrate her success due to the admission chaos. She failed to get into the local college of her choice even after two merit lists and was forced to take admission in a college allotted to her online. She talks about a friend who got allotted in another local college that turned out to be located in such a remote, inaccessible corner that the girl refused to take admission there.
“There is no offline forum to approach. Earlier, we could just visit colleges of our choice and seek admission there. Here, the wait is long and infuriating, and the gap between two lists is long. Besides, rules differ from college to college; one college insisted on the Aadhaar card, and we had to return home just for that,” says her mother Sudha Raja.
She says parents need to be counselled on how to go about the admission process since students fail to understand terms like ‘minority status’. She consulted a lawyer to get her queries answered on whether they could benefit from their linguistic minority status but realised it would narrow her admission pool.
Shalaka Salvi of the Parents Association of Mumbai, says she has heard of students stay up overnight just to fill up admission forms as the site is slow and hangs at times. “The government should set up offline information centres,” she says.
Chavan, however, says students will be sent only to 35 preferred colleges which they themselves select. They should sensibly select the right institution for them, he adds.
Jayant Jain, president of Forum for Fairness in Education says the online system has its own loopholes and colleges have managed to find ways to circumvent the new system. “In the initial two years, the online process was transparent. But colleges have managed to wriggle their way out, especially in their minority and management quotas. The system should be as transparent as the state medical admissions. I still find admissions happening offline in colleges, which is against the Supreme Court order to conduct the entire admission process online.”
The writer is a freelancer
