BHUBANESWAR: The state seems to have more Plus III seats than the number of students evincing interest in pursuing graduation in general streams, science, in particular.
The first phase admissions are underway and so far, 1.5 lakh seats are vacant. There are 1,056 degree colleges in the state with a students’ strength of 2.74 lakh across six streams of arts, commerce, physical science and biological science besides self-financing courses and Sanskrit. However this year, 2.37 lakh students (37,000 less than the number of seats) have applied for admission.
According to the students academic management system of the Higher Education department, of the 2.74 lakh seats, 1.2 lakh students have taken admission. The vacancy is more for physical science and biological science streams.Consider this, physical science seats in the 1,056 colleges are 45,071 but only 14,344 students have taken admission so far. Likewise, only 10,609 students have taken admission in biological science where the seat strength is 28,228. Interestingly, arts is the only stream where the gap between the number of seats and admissions is narrow.
Officials in the Higher Education department said a substantial number of seats will be filled up in the remaining admission phases but academicians have their doubts. They said in the last two academic sessions, over 75,000 seats each had remained vacant after all rounds of admissions in the colleges.
“Currently, the demand for professional courses is high which is why students are moving away towards such courses which are not available in the general colleges. Besides, the number of students who are appearing for engineering and medical examinations are increasing every year. So instead of opening more colleges every year, the department should focus on introducing professional courses that are market-oriented and skill-based,” said Mihir Tripathy, a city-based college principal.
The state has imposed restrictions on opening professional courses in self-financing mode in degree colleges.