The consensus arrived at between the education department and private managements for admission to professional colleges - as early as in December, for next year’s admissions - has come as a relief to students.
They can now prepare for the CET and Comed-K entrance tests, knowing well in advance how many seats are at stake. (See box for break-up).

Last year’s seat-sharing ratio will continue for admissions in 2008.

A cursory glance at the seat-sharing ratio for the past years shows a pattern which has been been stopped this year. Since 2002, the government’s share of seats, percentage wise, has declined. From its share of 85 per cent seats in the year 2002 in all streams - medical, dental and engineering  - it has gone down to 40 per cent seats in medical, 35 per cent in dental and 55 per cent in engineering. With both parties agreeing to maintain last year’s status quo, the decline in government share, percentage wise, has come to a stop.

More medical colleges
However, thanks to the increase in the number of government medical colleges (six new medical colleges were established during the last two years) the government’s share of seats, number-wise, has remained the same. While the government’s share of medical seats in the year 2003 was 1976 seats, it stood at 1993 seats in the year 2007.

In the engineering stream, the number of colleges has increased from 108 in the year 2002 to 138 in the year 2007. Seat-wise, the government’s share has increased from 28,753 to 32,450 seats.

Less dental seats
It is only in the dental stream that the government’s share of seats has come down drastically from 1,576 seats in 2002 to only 846 seats in 2007. It’s another matter that 370 dental seats had remained unfilled last year.
Like last year, all seats to be filled by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), the nodal which will conduct CET-2008, will have a uniform fee.  The concept of concessional fee seats and higher fee seats have been done away with. While all medical seats to be filled by KEA will have a uniform fee of Rs 35,000, dental seats will have a fee of Rs 25,000 and engineering seats, also Rs 25,000.

Higher fee seats have again been totally done away with, a move which was welcomed by students last year. The fees for these seats  (for instance medical seats) varied over the years from Rs 1.97 lakh in 2003 to Rs 1.72 lakh in 2004, to a staggering Rs 2.97 lakh in 2006 - finally to be abolished once for all.

Special programme
Chanakya Professional Courses Study Centre in association with Doordarshan Chandana will conduct Deevige, a special programme on Common Entrance Test and AIEEE on Chandana channel every day between 10 pm and 11 pm from January 2. The programme will be in 36 episodes and help students in preparing for the competitive examinations. The centre has also come out with CDs comprising lectures on syllabus prescribed for the exam. For details on CDs call: 94496-59072 / 94496-59074/ 23376200 or 25991124.