The Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) has imposed restrictions on admission for B.Sc nursing course in 75 private nursing colleges citing violation of rules and lack of basic facilities, and other reasons, for the academic year 2024-25.
The RGUHS has released the list of colleges to which admissions have been restricted. The maximum number of colleges are in Bengaluru (32). The remaining 43 colleges are located in Mangaluru, Udupi, Bidar, Chikkamagaluru, Kalaburagi, Chitradurga, Ballari, among other places.
Among professional health science courses, there is a huge demand for B.Sc nursing courses. Seats are being allotted through CET for B.Sc nursing courses since 2023. In CET 2024, 2.28 lakh students have qualified for this course.
Karnataka has around 615 nursing colleges. Most of the management quota seats are filled with students from outside Karnataka, especially Kerala and North-Eastern states.
According to the Indian Nursing Council guidelines for minimum requirements to establish B.Sc. College of Nursing, the eligible institution should have a 100-bed parent hospital.
For sanction of 100 seats for the B.Sc. Nursing programme, the institute must have a parent medical college or parent hospital having 300 beds, or above, besides availability of teaching and physical facilities for the course.
For sanction of 60 seats, the institute must have a parent hospital with 100-300 300 beds, apart from teaching and physical facilities for the course. For example, in a parent hospital having more than 100 beds but less than 300 beds, only 60 seats will be sanctioned for the B.Sc. Nursing course.
Other criteria are mandatory infrastructure such as well-equipped building, laboratory, library, teaching and non-teaching staff.
However, many private nursing colleges failed to fulfil this criteria during a joint inspection by officials of RGUHS and University Grants Commission (UGC).
According to sources, many colleges were functioning in rented buildings without basic infrastructure. Some colleges had neither parent medical colleges nor parent hospitals for clinical practice by the students. Lack of laboratory and library, shortage of faculty were seen in some colleges. Hence, admissions have been restricted in 75 such colleges this year by the RGUHS.
M.K.Ramesh, Vice-Chancellor of RGUHS, told The Hindu, “We have restricted enrollment in 75 private nursing colleges, which do not have parent colleges for clinical practice and do not have proper infrastructure. This time, the nursing seat matrix was not even received from these colleges. On an appeal by some colleges, a review was conducted, but only four or five colleges may have improved the basic facilities. If colleges have developed basic facilities, then we will allow admission.”
