Plus Two students take admission at Ramadevi College in Bhubaneswar (file picture)

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 29: The state government would derecognise Plus Two colleges where the number of students enrolled has been less than 10.

After two rounds of admissions, nearly 80,000 seats are yet to be filled across the state. The state government has extended the date of admission till September 3 hoping that more students would turn up.

Higher education minister Badri Narayan Patra said: “After the admission process is over, it is expected that nearly 50,000 seats will remain vacant. The department will soon issue a showcause notice to colleges asking them to explain why the enrolment has come down. We will also like to know why the quality of education has deteriorated over the years. After going through all the reports, the government will certainly take a firm step in this regard.”

Though the minister did not spell out what firm step the government would take, sources said the state government was contemplating to derecognise such colleges. The government was also thinking of merging small colleges with bigger ones where the enrolment of students was more, they said.

“Earlier, many students used to take admission through fake means. Sometimes they enrolled in different colleges. Now, with the launching of e-admission, the number of fake admissions have gone down drastically and the seats remained vacant,” Patra said.

At present, the state has 1,486 Plus Two colleges with nearly 3,12,372 seats. Till now, 2,33,000 students have been admitted into the colleges. In nearly 35 colleges, the number of students enrolled is less than 10. The number of colleges with less than 10 students would increase after data regarding vacant seats is updated by different college authorities, officials sources said.

Surprisingly, the number seats available in the Plus Two colleges is more than the required number this year because of the bad performance of students in the state board’s Class X exam. “If one takes the total enrolment, the number of seats is more than required,” an official of the higher education department said.

Board of Higher Secondary Education (BSE) president Satyakam Mishra said 2,94,330 students passed the matriculation examination from the state board. A total of 4,15,037 students appeared for the matriculation exams in regular stream and 49,252 students wrote the papers in ex-regular stream. Similarly 20,000 students passed from CBSE and ICSE boards this year.

The matriculation result this year is poor. A number of students took admission in various diploma courses and many were not able to pursue higher education because of several factors and seats remain vacant at the Plus two level, said an official of the higher education department. He added that the department would hold a meeting soon to take stock of the situation.

Nearly 20,000 seats were lying vacant in engineering colleges after two rounds of admission.

“A number of colleges have mushroomed across the state because of a faulty policy. The government should initiate steps for rationalisation of education and to address the plights of teachers working at these colleges,” said educationist Abani Baral.