BHUBANESWAR: Three universities and close to 30 degree colleges - both government and private - have been accused of putting students’ careers at risk by admitting them to the institutions in violation of the e-admission guidelines of the department of Higher Education.
These universities are Khallikote, Rajendra and Ravenshaw. Vice-chancellors of the three universities and principals of the seven government colleges and 25 private colleges have been issued show cause notices by the department for the violation.
College admissions are being done through the Students Academic Management System (SAMS). Officials said after admissions, the SAMS list of students admitted to colleges was sent to the universities, but a verification later revealed that names of some students who had taken admission by paying the fees were missing from the SAMS list.
Under the e-admission process, a student fills up a common application form (CAF) online where he/she submits options of a minimum of five and a maximum of 20 colleges. Slide-up ensures eligible students get selected for admission in higher ‘choice of preference’ institutions applied in the CAF.
Once the student gets a better college in slide-up, he/she is required to forgo the first college offered to him/her during the selection process and take admission to the college offered in slide-up. During the process, the admission fees paid to the first college by the student is refunded immediately.
“However, inquiry has revealed that if a student did not take admission in the slide-up for any reason, he/she came back to the first college, took admission again by paying all fees. It was the duty of the college authorities in charge of admissions to inform them that this is not permissible but they took the money for admissions and college fees for the entire academic year, admitted the student who continued to attend classes and appear for all internal exams. The student was assigned a roll number but the department was not informed about such admissions,” said a senior official of the department.
Prior to the final exams when the SAMS list of admitted students was tallied by the university with the list provided by colleges for generation of their exam registration numbers, the fraud came to light. “Names of over 50 students provided by the colleges were missing in the SAMS list as a result of which, their admission was considered null and void. Since the verification process is on, more such cases are likely to come to fore,” he added. The three universities too were found to have committed similar irregularity in PG admissions.
While the department has issued show cause notices to the heads of the institutions, it has recently regularised admission of such students to allow them appear the final examination.