Engineering colleges have been directed to begin academic activity from December 1, with COVID-19 precautionary measures in place apart from taking steps to tackle emotional issues of students coming into campuses after a two-year gap due to the pandemic.
Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) chairman, R. Limbadri said colleges have to ensure that their entire staff is vaccinated before welcoming students into classes while universities must organise special camps to administer doses to students who are yet to take the jab. “There should be no room for complacency in this aspect,” he said.
Prof. Limbadri said colleges are being instructed to open nodal centres on their campuses with counsellors from the teaching or non-teaching wings who have to keep in touch with the local medical officer to constantly guide the students. “These young students are emotionally vulnerable and their exposure to campus life should be smooth. The counsellors have to guide them,” he said.
Anti-ragging committees also have to be formed immediately as per the existing norms as the TSCHE will take violations seriously, he said. Colleges will be made responsible for any ragging incident.
Given the fears of new variants of the coronavirus emerging, he said colleges also have to be ready with a blended academic plan to make it easy for the students to adopt, if the need arises. Teachers have to be prepared and the necessary environment has to be created. “The University Grants Commission has allowed blended learning up to 40% of offline classes, and the colleges have the liberty to adopt it the way that suits them,” he added.
Seat vacancy
Meanwhile, the admission process in engineering colleges has almost been completed, including the special round of allotments. After the completion of counselling process, 22,679 seats remained vacant out of the total 79,856 in engineering stream under convenor quota. Similarly, in pharmacy, 4,203 out of the 4,426 seats were
Officials said 726 seats remained vacant in the university colleges and mostly these were in the newly-established JNTU College in Sircilla. There were few takers in the colleges under Kakatiya University. Nine colleges, including one private college and eight university colleges, saw 100% seats filled up. One college went without even a single admission.
In the sought-after computer science engineering (CSE) stream, 1,505 seats remained vacant out of the 19,101 available in the convenor quota. Other courses like electronics and communication engineering (ECE) saw 3,626 seats going vacant while 4,151 seats were vacant in electrical and electronics engineering (EEE).
