The Hindu : Guidelines for admission to unaided private colleges

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 16, 2003

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Guidelines for admission to unaided private colleges

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI May 15. The Government has finalised guidelines for admission to unaided private medical and dental colleges as a follow-up to a Supreme Court judgment of October last, which allows for greater discretion to these institutions in admission and fixing fee, and, at the same time, directed the State Governments to ensure that they followed the merit system and did not overcharge.

In a related development, the Centre has also come out with a detailed timetable, which the States have to follow for admission, commencement of the academic session as also closure of admission by both Government and private medical and dental colleges.

A salient feature of the guidelines is that even while seeking to fix the minimum number of seats that needed to be filled by candidates who had qualified in the common entrance tests (CETs) conducted by the States and to set a ceiling on the fee structure, it also has an element of flexibility to provide for factors like whether an institution was in an urban or a rural area.

For instance, while ordaining that at least 75 per cent of the seats should be filled by students qualifying in CETs in respect of non-minority institutions and 50 per cent in case of minority institutions, it provides that seats in the State quota need not, however, be filled through the process of State Government counselling alone.

The State Governments can decide in respect of each college what percentage of CET-qualified students would be filled by them through their counselling process and what ratio could be filled through counselling by the institute managements.

Likewise, the States may allocate a certain number of seats to candidates belonging to the poor and weaker sections of society as per their inter-se merit. The States may bear a part of the fee for them in the form of scholarships or ask the colleges to do so.

On the issue of fee structure, a major bone of contention in the field of medical education, the guideline enjoins upon each State to set up a special standing committee for fixing a ceiling limit for the State as a whole. The panels would be mandated to fix the ceiling on a realistic basis to ensure that even while the managements do not over-charge, they were allowed a ``reasonable surplus'' for the institutes' development. The fee structure would be valid for three years and would be applicable to new students only.

The guidelines also require the State Governments to set up special standing committees for redressal of grievances of the student community on issues such as admission and fees and to mention the admission procedure and the fee structure adopted by them in the eligibility certificate while recommending to the Centre to establish new medical and dental colleges.

With regard to the time-schedule for admissions, commencement of academic sessions and closure of admission, the new guideline prescribes that the academic session should start between August 1 and 31 in respect of MBBS/BDS courses, May 2 for post-graduate courses and August 1 for super-specialities.

It also prescribes that no student should be admitted even against vacancies arising out of any reason beyond September 30 for MBBS/BDS courses and super-specialities and May 31 for post-graduate courses.

In addition, it requires that heads of colleges should inform the Director-General of Health Services latest by July 25 any vacancy existing after July 15 in respect of national quota.

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