Shimla: With more seats on offer than the number of students available and to top it picking out meritorious ones from those who have qualified the Joint Engineering Entrance Examination (JEEE) has most of the private universities in a fix as there are not enough students to fill up the available seats.
A senior functionary of one of the universities pointed out that about 12,000 students in Himachal Pradesh appeared for the ten plus two (10+2) board examination in the non-medical stream and there are about 18,000 engineering seats available in various institutions.
It would be in the best interests of students and the institutions if the government relaxed the norms and permittedg admissions through a common entrance examination instead of only allowing admissions through the JEEE route, he said.
Moreover, he added, there was no such restriction in neighbouring Punjab and Haryana. We would lose out on available students to institutes in these states.
With Himachal being the only state to have put in place an education regulatory commission, the conditionality of ensuring that merit prevailed in admissions to various courses, the commission has imposed the condition of only admitting students who had cleared their JEEE.
As Editor, Ravinder Makhaik leads a team of media professionals at Hill Post.
Spanning a career of over two decades in mass communication, as a Documentary Filmmaker, TV journalist, Print Media journalist and with Online & Social Media, he brings with him a vast experience. He lives in Shimla.
I strongly hold that merit should not be compromised at any cost. The private as well as government run engineering colleges in the various universities should only be allowed to admit only those who qualify the joint entrance examination. On the other hand, State governments should exercise reasonable caution in opening in opening new private universities. Universities should perform the role of temples of learning by adhering to merit rather than becoming commercial entities by sacrificing merit and quality of education.