Admission delays leave students frustrated in Pune

Pune: The delayed admission process for various professional courses in the state has left students and parents a frustrated and worried lot

Pune: The delayed admission process for various professional courses in the state has left students and parents a frustrated and worried lot. The Maharashtra State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell has completed two Common Admission Process (CAP) rounds for engineering admissions along with other courses. From February 5, the institutional-level round of MHT-CET Bachelor of Technology (BTech) counselling 2021 will begin.

HT Image

“Colleges have many vacant seats for various courses like engineering, pharmacy, management, agriculture and other streams. Specifically in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur cities, there are colleges where admissions are not happening which include both government and private colleges. We have completed the two CAP round of admissions and now the institutional-level admission process will begin,” said Maharashtra Chintamani Joshi, commissioner, state CET cell.

“While admission process is still going on, medical and dental courses admissions have completed. Engineering admissions will end on February 5 then agriculture and law admissions will start from same day. But the response by students is not as expected in engineering as except computer sciences and artificial intelligence, there are vacancies for other courses across the state. For example, in one college there are 100 available seats for an engineering course and only two students have shown interest,” said Joshi.

The Class 11 First Year Junior College (FYJC) admissions are also delayed. For this year’s 11th standard admissions, 72,820 students were eligible for admission in 304 colleges of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad areas. Due to the interim stay given by the Supreme Court (SC) on the implementation of the quota for the Maratha community in jobs and education, the state education department stopped the admission process for FYJC since September 9 and it resumed from November 26.

After completing three regular rounds and two special rounds of admission process, the deputy director of education (DyDE), Pune, took one round of first-come-first-served (FCFS).

At least 36,000 seats are still vacant in Pune division and the remaining students who have still not completed the admission process will get one more chance for FCFS second round that will be announced soon.

“We have received permission from the state government to take one more round of FCFS. The schedule of the round will be announced soon,” said AS Ukirde, deputy director of education for Pune division.

Kuldeep Ambekar, student and president of Students’ Helping Hand organisation, said, “Post issues related to Covid, the delay in admissions for various courses has added to students’ woes. Technical issues and state government’s decisions have led to admissions still going on. Hope the admission delay does not affect students’ career prospects.”