The Higher Education Department’s decision to move the application process for courses in government arts and science colleges online for the first time this year has evoked a good response.
As many as 89,538 students have registered themselves for various programmes and 39,916 students have made payments too. In all, 109 colleges have 92,000 seats on offer. Higher Education Department officials said the Department had coordinated with the School Education Department so that all eligible students could be encouraged to go for college education. The officials said they were taking it one step at a time.
Whether counselling will be an online process is unclear yet, though officials said the next step of generating the merit list might be considered if they encountered no hitch in the registration and payment of fees. On an average, government colleges receive around two lakh applications, the officials said.
A section of government college professors wants the Department to include aided colleges in the admission process. A professor from a rural college said that though students had been given the opportunity to upload relevant documents through mobile phones, some continued to come to colleges for the purpose. “They are asking us if in-person admission will be held, and we don’t have an answer,” he said.
A professor said students had approached Internet centres and ended up paying ₹300 for registration and application.
