Bhubaneswar, April 3: Higher education secretary Aparajita Sarangi has assured students pursuing self-financing courses at BJB (Autonomous) College that they would get their registration numbers from the degree granting authority, Utkal University, within a fortnight.
Peeved over the delay in granting affiliation to the six sponsored courses running at the college over the past five years by two private organisations in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode, the students had staged a demonstration on campus last week. One of their representatives had approached Sarangi, requesting her to intervene and resolve the issue.
On Saturday, Sarangi took stock of the situation at a meeting with the authorities of Utkal University, BJB College and the two private organisations. A decision was taken to conduct a review of all such courses running in the state in PPP mode, said university registrar D.N. Jena.
“She expressed her dissatisfaction over the quality of education and lack of proper infrastructure provided under the sponsored courses at BJB and directed the college officials to submit the registration fee of the students. As soon as we get it, we will issue individual registration numbers to all students enrolled up to 2011-12 batch on the very next day,” Jena said.
Sources said it might be difficult for the two private organisations to get permission from the Utkal University for running the courses from the coming academic session. “The secretary will never compromise with quality and after all these complaints, the two parties — Heritage Vision and Pratibha Education Trust — will need to pull up their socks,” said a university official.
BJB College authorities have said they did not want private organisations and trusts to be allowed to run sponsored courses using their premises.They said they were “sick and tired of being dragged into controversies” because of the dubious organisations operating on campus.
“The state government must restrict the private organisations from conducting admissions from the coming academic session. It was because of political pressure that the college collaborated with them and gave them support in terms of infrastructure and teaching staff. Unfortunately, these private establishments view education as a business and are least bothered about the future of the students, who have been demanding individual registration numbers from the university for the last two years,” said a former teacher associated with one of these courses.
The teacher added that the university, however, must ensure that students presently pursuing the five-year integrated courses were not left in the lurch. “These students have already been cheated. The university must provide them documents certifying that they are its bona fide students.”
Outgoing principal of BJB (Autonomous) College, Susama Tripathy, said she has already sent the deposit amount of the students for the registration numbers last December. “After The Telegraph published a report last November regarding this matter, university authorities had sent us a computerised sheet with the registration numbers of the students, but it was not signed by any official. I hope that with the education secretary’s intervention this time the problem will be solved once and for all,” she said.
