At the end of the spectrum are the vast majority of ordinary colleges who have to
share remainder 50% of the rank structure holding ranks, 30000 or more. What are their credentials? These are students who qualified to write CET with bare minimum marks and choose engineering because seats are easily available and the fees payable is very well affordable. Some of them join due to parental pressure and are not motivated enough to take on a challenging course of education. They do not mind giving it a try; even it meant loss of one year. Nearly 25 to 30% of the students do not complete the four years curriculum. The present CET system perpetuates academic apartheid by sending all good students to reputed colleges and pushing mediocre students to lesser known colleges. The net result of such a skewed system is listed below:-
The top grade colleges continue to do well academically by virtue of getting all good students.
With full admission year after year, the top grade colleges have enough income to implement revised pay scales as per 6th CPC.
All potential corporate employers target only these top grade colleges for campus selection as they are confident about the caliber of the students.
The ordinary colleges have to face the brunt of all ill effects of this system. They get mediocre students and that too only to the extent of 25 to 50% of their CET quota. All the unfilled seats are shared by them. Companies hesitate visiting these colleges for campus selection. Their staff cannot be paid revised salaries. The net effect of all this is a bleak future.
Thus CET system which was originally meant to provide fair and equal opportunities to all has become the prime source of discrimination whereby it helps some colleges to flourish at the cost of ordinary colleges. They failed to provide equal representation of good and mediocre students to all colleges; they failed to distribute the vacant seats to all colleges in equal proportion. If they cant ensure equitable distribution, should they continue to meddle with the higher education system? On top of this, CET forces 5% of the approved intake as free seats under fee waiver scheme to all colleges. This means, a college with an approved intake of 400, if only 25% of the sets are filled will get 100 fresh admissions of which 20 (5% of 400) will be free seats. This means that the college has to survive and function effectively from the fees collected from just 80 students. Can we imagine the plight of such colleges?
We will bring the last part in our next article so stay tuned.