Availability of seats in undergraduate courses in the University of Calicut, the biggest institution in the higher education sector in the Malabar region, has become a talking point as the admission process in its affiliated colleges is all set to begin soon.
The admission monitoring committee of the university is meeting on Monday. Notification for admissions is expected to be issued in the coming days.
It was academics and activists aligned to the United Democratic Front (UDF) who flagged a perceived shortage in the seats soon after the Plus Two results were out. They cited a circular brought out by C. Thabeetha George, Joint Registrar, on June 21 on the marginal increase of seats for 2022-23. The circular said that the maximum number of seats available for B.A. and B.Com. courses would be 60. For B.Sc. and BCA., it is 48; BBA, BSW, BTTM, BVC, B.A. (Multimedia) 50, and BTHM, BHA and BHM it is 40. It was pointed out that the Higher Education department had allowed a maximum of 70 seats for B.A. and B.Com seats in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic and that the number would come down by 10 this year. The UDF-aligned activists claimed that though the university Syndicate recently allowed proportional increase of seats up to 20%, the number of seats in undergraduate courses might get reduced from last year’s 1.1 lakh.
There are around 300 arts and science colleges affiliated to the University of Calicut, of which over 200 are in the self-financing sector. It was claimed that the perceived shortage in seats along with the State government’s order barring the University of Calicut from starting admissions to distance education courses would hit students in the region.
The university authorities, however, denied these claims saying that the government circular of 2020 had been implemented in colleges in the past two years. Even then, around 25,000 seats were left vacant last year. Syndicate members pointed out that their efforts would be to create seats based on the number of applicants. They claimed that the government had sanctioned new courses in all colleges to ensure the higher education prospects of students. Increase in seats was possible only according to the infrastructure available. There are district-level committees to monitor all these, they added.
P. Rasheed Ahammed, pro-UDF Syndicate member, claimed that the so-called vacant seats were in self-financing colleges and government and aided colleges did not have many. In a letter to R. Bindu, Higher Education Minister, he claimed that new government or aided colleges were not sanctioned last year. If same number of seats in undergraduate courses like last year are not approved this time, the students would have to face hardships, he added.
