Lesser BE seats at higher fees for the meritorious this year

The higher education department is sacrificing the interests of the state’s student community in its efforts strike a deal with private engineering college managements on seat-sharing and fee structure for undergraduate courses. As a result, not only will the number of government quota seats in Common Entrance Test (CET) 2011 be lesser, the fees for them will also be higher.

Sources in the department confirmed that there would be a 10% reduction in government quota seats. “It has also been decided at the official level to increase the fee for government quota seats this year. The  order will be out after a meeting with the private college managements in a couple of days,” sources said.

“The seat sharing between the government and private colleges in CET 2010 was 50:50. This time it has been decided to give up 10% of the seats to the managements. The seat sharing will be 40:60 with the government getting 40% of the seats,” the source explained. This might translate into a loss of at least 5,000 seats under the government quota.

The fee will be increased from Rs30,000 to Rs32,500 this year.

“The government had been successful in convincing the managements during the last few years. But this time, the managements drove a hard bargain. It became very tough to convince them and the higher education minister finally decided to accept their demand for a fee hike,” the source further said.

However, the hike scarcely meets the demand of private managements, which suggested a doubling of the fees.

“We can’t do that. Taking the interest of both the managements and students into consideration, we decided to hike the fee by Rs2,500. We will discuss the issue with the managements at the next meeting,” an official said.