Wednesday, Jun 24, 2009
Chennai: Unless the government reduces the time gap between the date when the Plus Two results are released and the date of counselling for professional colleges, it cannot succeed in preventing private engineering colleges from fleecing students, Congress whip Peter Alphonse has said.

Participating in a debate on the demand for grants for higher education, he said the long gap caused anxiety to parents and they paid donations to private colleges to get seats for their wards. “But these colleges will not come forward to repay the amount if the students get seats in some other colleges. So reduce the gap,” he said, suggesting that the government could think about giving random numbers for counselling on the day of results. Explaining that the government had already reduced the gap to 40 days from 60, Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudy pointed out the practical difficulties in the simultaneous release of examination results and random numbers for counselling.

He said the first priority of the students was medicine; the engineering stream came only next. Moreover, despatching mark sheets to schools took around ten days, he said, promising to look into the Congress member’s suggestion.

Stressing the need for creating higher educational institutions such as the Bharthidasan Institute of Management, a brainchild of late C. Subramaniam, in collaboration with the public and private sectors, Mr. Alphonse said Tamil Nadu could be made a “higher education hub” through such efforts.

He brought to the government’s attention the recruitment of students by Russian universities in Tirunelveli district.

“Our students pay in dollars and get admission,” he said.