Mangaluru: With the process of admission to Engineering colleges entering 11th day, it is evident that there are very few takers for engineering seat, when compared to last year. However, this has nothing to do with the fact that as many as 20 courses and eight engineering colleges are opting for progressive closure in the State. The sad state of affair is that the students have no clue about the same.
Candidates at the CET centre in Mangaluru
With the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) stating that it would be releasing the seat matrix and also announcing the fee structure on Tuesday, June 14, the candidates at the CET centre in Mangaluru are nervous after knowing about progressive closure.
How will we, from the from the seat Matrix that runs into several pages, identify the colleges which have opted for progressive closure and the colleges in which courses are going to closed? This is the only question that lingers in the minds of most students.
Some of the parents, said what is the government trying to hide by not revealing the name of those colleges and the course which are going to be closed. This would make the task easy when selection of college and option entry is to be made. Interestingly one of the candidates’ parent, asked, what is progressive closure of a college, I wish the government come out clear on this!
The draft seat matrix released by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) reveals that 47,507 engineering seats will be available in the Common Entrance Test (CET) pool this year, a drop by more than 5,000 seats over last year. As per information available with the All-India Council of Technical Education, which gives license to all technical institutions in the country, eight out of the 100 colleges that have received approval for progressive close for the 2016-17 academic year are from Karnataka. Similarly, 20 out of 462 courses that have received approval for progressive closure of courses for 2016-17 academic year are from the State. The maximum closure of courses is seen for the information science and engineering stream, with five colleges choosing to close this stream.
Even while acknowledging the reduction in the number of seats, officials in CET centre said, that representative from certain colleges were offering seats to candidates, at CET fees structure, but we did not encourage them.
Officials at some other CET centre on conditions of anonymity said that, last year, a candidate who was issued admission order for the course and college of her choice, later realised that no such course existed in that college. For this reason, a KEA official said that only a draft of the seat matrix has been released this year.
KEA, CEO D S Ramesh, when contacted and explained about the many candidates worry, about government not announcing the names of courses and the college which are going to be closed, he said, there is plenty of time for the candidate, and by going through the seat matrix, they can themselves find it.
