The heads of government and government-aided colleges have urged the state education department to start the undergraduate admission process immediately after the publication of the Plus-II board results this year.
They said that they wanted to hold the process along with autonomous and minority institutions that follow their own schedules.
This, they said, could help in containing the problem of seats remaining vacant.
The heads of colleges gave this suggestion recently when the education department sought their opinion on undergraduate admissions through the centralised portal for this year.
The portal was started last year in a departure from the usual practice of asking colleges to admit students through their stand-alone portals.
Lady Brabourne College principal Siuli Sarkar said admission through the centralised portal last year was launched one-and-a-half months after the publication of Plus-II board results and after the autonomous and the minority colleges wrapped up their admissions.
“The delay in starting the admission process cost us dearly. We started the admission process at a time when the autonomous and minority institutions had completed the process. We did not have any level playing field and this, I think, was one of the reasons behind seats remaining vacant. So, we have suggested that the admission be started immediately after the results and be held simultaneously across the institutions,” said Sarkar.
Sarkar gave her opinion last Sunday.
The department has kept the autonomous, minority, unitary and private institutions out of the ambit of the centralised portal.
In many colleges, almost 40 per cent of the seats remained vacant.
The department asked colleges to start independent counselling from September 7 last year as a little over 4 lakh out of 9 lakh seats remained vacant after the centralised counselling that started on June 24, more than one-and-a-half months after the publication of the Plus-II results.
Metro reported on October 3 that a substantial number of seats remained vacant in government and government-aided colleges after the institutes conducted independent counselling.
At Lady Brabourne College, 250 out of 750 seats then remained vacant.
At Asutosh College 1,600 out of 3,300 seats were yet to be filled.
At Surendranth College 1,300 out of 3,100 seats had remained vacant.
The department ordered another round of independent counselling by the colleges in November.
The situation hardly improved.
Suredranath College principal Indranil Kar, who is also the secretary of the All Bengal Principals’ Council, Calcutta chapter, said: “During the virtual meeting held with officials of the department on Tuesday, we urged them to start the admission across institutions immediately after the Plus-II results are out. Last year, many undergraduate aspirants enrolled in autonomous or minority institutions or private colleges or universities by the time the government-aided colleges started their admission process.”
The delay in starting the admissions is also coming in the way of completing the segmented syllabus on time, said some of the principals.
“The four-year undergraduate course launched from 2023-24 academic year has become exhaustive. If we admit students at a later date, it becomes difficult for us to complete the syllabus,” said principal Sarkar.