Gimmick: Decision to set up new colleges doing more harm than good
Srinagar: The government’s announcement of approving new 50 degree colleges for the state has contradicted the state’s own report about the dwindling trend of student enrolment in the colleges.
The state administration has claimed that the new 50 colleges were announced on public demand as many areas were ‘unserved’ by the higher education department. However, the official report prepared by the higher education department earlier stated that the enrolment in colleges was witnessing a downward trend.
Also, it was stated that only 30 percent of the students after qualifying their class 12th exams join the undergraduate courses in degree colleges due to which the enrolment in the colleges is witnessing a decreasing trend.
Notably, the state administrative council approved new 50 colleges for state. The colleges were approved at a time when the recently approved 52 colleges are yet to be made functional. In most of the colleges the land is yet to be identified for carrying out constructions for building the college campuses.
“As per norms, the department first identifies the land which is followed by the approval of the college for the location in the area. But surprisingly, the governor administration is approving colleges without identification of land or location for carrying out the construction,” an official said wishing not to be named.
Out of the already existing colleges, the state has 23 degree colleges without permanent campus exposing the laxity of the government in providing proper accommodation to the students. These colleges were approved under various schemes more than eight years ago.
“Instead of announcing new colleges, the government should have preferred to strengthen the existing colleges by upgrading the infrastructure and introducing new courses for students,” the official added.
It may be recalled that the governor administration had stonewalled the opening of 26 colleges announced by the previous PDP led coalition government citing that there was no concurrence taken from financial and planning department.
Commissioner Secretary higher education department Talat Parvez Ruhella said the colleges were announced on public demand wherein the unserved areas were kept into consideration as well.
“The new colleges include new professional colleges as well,” he added.
KV Correspondent
