Karnataka: Poor admissions in 170 govt colleges as efforts to improve quality fail

At least 170 state-run degree colleges have failed to attract students notwithstanding the government’s efforts to improve quality of education, data shows.

Though the department of collegiate education has extended the last date for first year/semester undergraduate courses admissions till September 15, the admissions so far at several government degree colleges is poor, with some of them failing to fill up even 50% of the seats.

Of the 430 government first grade colleges, 171 colleges have failed to cross an intake of even 100 for the 2022-23 academic year.

Online woes

Principals of the colleges and the faculty blame the unified university college management system (UUCMS), through which admissions are mandatory this year.

According to principals, specially of colleges in rural areas, the students are not familiar with online mode.

“We have opened help desk to help students upload documents online. Despite that, we were able to admit only 40% of the overall intake,” said the principal of a college in Mangaluru.

Department officials said it is premature to consider these admissions as final.

“We have to wait for the II PU supplementary results and also for KCET admission process to get over. The admissions will improve after that,” said a senior official from the department.

But officials admitted that admissions at some of the colleges in Kalyana Karnataka region and Kodagu were in single digits.

“These colleges witnessed single digit admissions even in the past few years and there were also discussions to shift those colleges. But considering the interest of students, we dropped the idea,” an official said.

Poor results in arts

Officials also blamed poor results in arts stream in II PU exams this year. “The demand for commerce and BCA courses is high and exceeds availability of seats,” he said.

Eleven evening colleges started by the government have recorded single digit admissions and officials say the admissions will pick up after the II PU supplementary results.