The onset of summer not only shoots up the temperature but also the frantic activity among colleges to get the focus and admit the best students.
Education consultants, charitable trusts and others join the bandwagon in conducting career guidance and several such programmes.
Keen observers of the education industry say this is a phenomenon peculiar to Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, as the number of colleges and engineering aspirants is high and each wants the best of the other.
In Tamil Nadu, the advertisement and branding exercise race among colleges is to admit students who rank between 25,000 and 70,000 in the engineering admission rank list, for the first 25,000 students in the rank list and those who successfully clear the joint entrance examination for engineering admissions in colleges across country are more or less sure of what they want to study and where and also get what they want.
Plus, those students also have ‘Plan B’ and ‘Plan C’ ready.
In getting the students in the 25,000 – 70,000 rank list category, the colleges stand to gain because will be placement-ready at the end of four years of engineering and good at academics as well and this will help the college promote itself among competitors.
This is the reason for the colleges competing with one another with to get the students, most of who will also be ready to spend on management quota seats.
However, not all colleges follow this model. Some colleges throw open their campuses for parents and students to see what they have the quality of faculty, the courses they offer and how they train students.
They also let parents and students interact with faculty.
Academics say the best way for colleges to attract talents and also prove that they are better than the lot is to let the alumni speak of colleges.
This is the practice in the United States and it is slowly catching up in institutions in India as well.
Reporting by
Karthik Madhavan
