Patna: Outgoing governor Satya Pal Malik has been credited with taking various steps to reform and streamline the higher education sector in Bihar, but many of them failed to yield the desired results.

In May this year, Malik while attending a function at AN College, came down heavily on the mushrooming BEd colleges in state. Based on the chancellor's directive, the state government for the first time carried out a combined BEd entrance exam that was held on July 15. Around 82,132 candidates appeared in the exam for around 33,700 BEd seats in 314 private and government BEd colleges. However, many BEd seats at different colleges are still vacant.

Khagendra Kumar, head of department of education at Patna University, said: "Many BEd seats at colleges are vacant as students are not taking admission. Based on the combined entrance test merit score, students have been allotted colleges which are far from their home district, leaving many seats vacant.

"The main aim of the combined BEd entrance test was to tighten the screws on private colleges which charge fees arbitrarily," Khagendra said. "The private BEd colleges later approached the high court and the court fixed Rs 1.70 lakh as the maximum fees a college can take for two-year courses. The results of the high court order was that private colleges which were taking Rs 1 lakh fees now have raised their fees to Rs 1.5 lakh for two years."

In April this year, governor Malik appointed retired army personnel as registrar of universities, but many of them do not know how a university functions.

Patna University Teachers Association president Randhir Kumar Singh said: "These registrars take the help of junior staff for official work and many a times they get misguided by junior staff."

Not all of Malik's steps have failed. He did tweak for the better some rules at universities. The installation of biometric attendance system for teachers and non-teaching staff is one such step.

Atul Aditya Pandey, a teacher of Patna Science College, said: "With the installation of biometric attendance machines, the teachers and non-teaching staff have become more regular and are spending not less than five hours every day at colleges."

Similarly, it was the instruction of chancellor to revise the syllabus of universities - which were not revised for more than a decade.

It was also the initiative of Malik that universities were asked to conduct students' union election.

The governor also introduced the concept of monthly meeting with vice-chancellors where the VCs were asked to present the monthly progress report of their institutions.