Admission crisis: Fate of more than 1.50 lakh students hangs in the balance

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: Owing to the inadequate number of seats in higher education across the State, over 1.50 lakh students — who had recently cleared the examinations of HSLC (High School Leaving Certificate) and the Higher Secondary (HS) — will not be able to get admitted into the State Government-run educational institutions.

Sources in the Education Department said that there are 37 government high secondary schools, 625 provincialized higher secondary schools, 65 provincialized secondary schools, 11 government colleges, 301 provincialized colleges and 385 non-provincialized educational institutions.

Going by the existing seats available in these educational institutions, as many as 62,000 students who cleared the HSLC exam this year, will not be able to get admission into Class XI in the government-run institutions. Altogether 3.97 lakh students have been declared successful in this year's HSLC or Matriculation examination.

On the other hand, the number of seats available for the degree courses (BA, B.Sc. and B.Com) is 1.73 lakh. However, as many as 2, 47,278 students have cleared the Higher Secondary examinations in the streams of Arts, Science, and Commerce as well as the Vocational stream this year.

Under such circumstances, a total of 74,278 successful students will not be able to secure admission in colleges to pursue the degree courses. Besides the students from the State boards, those (around 24,000) passed the Class XII final exams from the CBSE will also apply for admission into the colleges.

"The crisis of admission into the colleges across the State will be unprecedented this year due to the very high pass percentage in HSLC, HS and CBSE examinations. The number of successful students far exceeds the existing seats in colleges and other government institutions in the State," pointed out the source.

It has been further learnt that unless the authority concerned does something to increase the number of seats in the government-run colleges and higher secondary institutions, a section of the privately-run educational institutions will exploit the situation and rule the roost.

"There is a mushrooming of private junior colleges in the State. Once students fail to get themselves admitted into the government-run institutions they will be compelled to approach the private institutions," added the source.

Also Read: Over 93% pass High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC)/Assam High Madrassa (AHM)exams

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