About 82% of first year students who gained admission in the engineering and pharmacy colleges this year have sought eligibility for fee reimbursement scheme, submitting the requisite income certificates.
Out of the 61,169 candidates who were allotted seats only 46,322 have showed interest in taking admissions and of these, 19,200 students have claimed total fee reimbursement under various categories. About 18,900 candidates applied under the partial reimbursement and only 8,250 students have fully paid the fee. This amounts to 82% of the candidates taking fee reimbursement of the State government.
Candidates who claimed 100% fee reimbursement come under the SC, ST and Minority categories, for whom the government pays total fee irrespective of the college fee if their parents’ income is below ₹ 2 lakh per year both in the rural and urban areas.
Apart from these, candidates who have studied their Intermediate from any government college for complete two years are also eligible for total reimbursement if they fulfil the income conditions irrespective of their social category. Candidates whose rank is below 10,000 are also eligible for 100% reimbursement even if they are from OC and BC categories.
All others will be eligible for partial reimbursement if their parents income is below ₹ 1.5 lakh in the rural areas and ₹ 2 lakh in the urban areas. However, their reimbursement is limited to ₹ 35,000 only and the remaining fee has to be paid by the candidates. The fee ranges from ₹ 35,000 to ₹ 1.34 lakh depending on the college as approved by the Telangana Admission and Fee Regulation Committee (TAFRC).
Poor Response
Astonishingly, nearly 15,000 candidates who were allotted seats in the first phase of counselling did not show any interest in the colleges. The reasons apparently are that they are neither interested in the allotted college or the allotted stream. Some toppers who have not reported are sure of a seat in the IITs, NITs or have moved to private universities in other States, a trend that is catching on.
Even the sought-after Computer Science Engineering (CSE) stream saw just 13,942 candidates reporting for admission out of the 18,561 who were allotted seats. The CSE (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) course too saw only 4,224 students reporting out of the 5,429 allotted. Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) too did not receive much favour as only 9,336 candidates reported out of the 12,308 allotted. The Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) too suffered heavily with just 2,861 students joining out of the 4,035 who secured seats. Civil Engineering with 2,312 reporting out of 3,177 allotments and Mechanical Engineering with just 1,826 out of 2,550 allotments too did not find favour with the students.
