As thousands of students move out of the State to private and deemed universities elsewhere for ‘better’ education and employment opportunities thereafter, the higher education authorities are clueless on the number of such students and the reasons why they are doing so.
The administration is caught unawares when Telugu students are violently attacked or when they commit suicide. The recent incident of a Khammam student committing suicide in Haryana was one such example, even as the memory of clashes between Telugu students and locals at the NIT campuses in Manipur and Srinagar last year was still fresh.
Surprisingly, even after such incidents, the Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) has not made any attempt to gather information on Telugu students pursuing higher education in other States. When incidents where students’ lives at a risk take place, officials are completely clueless about how to handle the situation. Even the consolidated data of NITs and IITs was not available with the TSCHE.
Parents say officials must maintain some kind of record of the details of students so that swift action can be to be taken. “The data also helps the government analyse why they were moving out when the State itself has so many seats going vacant in all disciplines,” says Ramchandram, whose niece is pursuing engineering in Lovely Professional University (LPU), Chandigarh.
Parmesh, whose brother is studying in NIT Manipur, recollected the tension his family had to go through when locals clashed with Telugu students. “Tracking the students involved or those affected would be easy for the administration if they maintain the record,” he says.
Popular colleges
Some of the popular private institutes thronged by Telugu students include Vellore Institute of Technology, Sathyabama University, SRM University, Manipal University, LPU, Amity University, Amrita and Shiv Nadar apart from IITs, IIITs and NITs.
“Exploitation by private institutes in neighbouring states goes unchecked,” says Venusri, who has been fighting for the last five years against a college that admitted him for an aeronautical course. Ultimately, he found that it was not recognised and officials here had no information on that too. “About 80 % of those affected were Telugu students only,” he says.
The TSCHE Chairman, T. Papi Reddy agreed that there is no tracking of students movement to institutions outside the state. He also agreed that such data was necessary while designing our education policies as well and assured that efforts would be made in this direction. “We will create a mechanism where students moving out need to report it online at least. We will also write to various universities and institutions to share the data of Telangana students.”
EOM
