WITH the HSC results made public, fights now start for admission to universities where the limitation of seats remains the most prohibitive factor for admission to students aspiring to get himself or herself to a public university. As it appears the country’s 38 public universities offer around 54,000 seats. Then the National University; which controls government colleges and Open University offers more seats. Medical Colleges and Dental Colleges offer another 3,750 seats to first year students. As we see this year a total of 7.29 lakh students passed HSC and equivalent examinations and out of them 58,276 got GPA-5 and some 2.5 lakh obtained GPA between 4 and 5.
The private universities now offer the bulk of seats to students who fail to get seat at public universities. But the government anti-militancy campaign against private universities this year has already created a negative attitude towards some of those universities particularly when the authorities are publicly suggesting names of some universities that need to be avoided. In fact such government policy is creating more chaos in our education when admission seekers will feel uneasy about going to private universities that may risk them to become militant suspects over time.
The question is now how so many students would get a seat for higher education in universities when competition for admission at public universities will be quite tough and private universities are facing damning campaign. In this situation students will have to travel now from one corner of the country to another to sit for admission test at public universities where each university will take a limited number of students. Meanwhile, the fight for admission in government colleges also remains in the hands of the National University, which is not only marred with many irregularities and corruption but also can’t give seat to most students selected by holding admission test. Uncertainty is thus making the life of students unbearable as to whether or not they will be able to find a place in a government college, if not at a public university.
Students are initially loath to get admission to private universities and colleges, which are highly expensive and not affordable to many coming from poor and middle-income families. In fact there is a big risk of hangover for many students who will not get a seat at public universities and can’t afford at private universities. Meanwhile, the militancy link of many private universities or otherwise, since students of some private universities were found involved in militant attacks, private universities have also lost appeal as safe place for higher education. Most private universities have as many as seven monitoring groups watching students’ movement and activities, which scare many.
