Telangana: Government colleges stare at hostel blues over online admissions

Hyderabad: The State universities, the Directorate of Collegiate Education and the Higher Education department are reportedly working in isolation.

The universities and Education department, besides the Planning wing, are responsible for giving demand forecasting infrastructure requirements for the education sector to the government. Despite all necessary tools available to the departments, has the department failed the government, or the government failed the department in allocation of funds remains a million- dollar question. But the demand for more hostels is growing from undergraduate colleges and State universities.

According to sources in the Higher Education department (HED) the problem of demand for hostels has turned complicated after introduction of online entrance tests in Telangana. The students apply, give online tests, and opt for a course, and specialisation in under-graduate and post-graduate courses. The allocation of seats and colleges is done online. For example, this makes a student from Bhadrachalam get a seat in a government college in Hyderabad, Warangal or Karimnagar.

Speaking to The Hans India, an official from the administrative wing of Kakatiya University said, "earlier, students used go along with their parents and physically submit their applications. It was a manual process in which they used to submit applications to colleges located in their vicinity. or colleges which are accessible to them offering the courses they wanted."

This helped the students figure out the hostel facilities at the time of applying for courses. In turn, the colleges, universities and students have clarity that whether they can get hostel facility before joining the courses.

However, now everything is done online only. The colleges are in the dark about how many students would take admissions till the reporting date. Besides, all phases of seat allocations are completed against the sanctioned strength of seats. And, how many of the admitted students could be provided hostel accommodation?.

Similarly, students have no information about the hostel facilities while applying online for particular courses in a given college. "A simple addition in the online application process reduces a lot of headaches. Students could be asked while applying to a college if they needed hostel accommodation? This is the practice which many universities adopt to take care of fresh students coming from districts within a State or States."

"The government college or university may not be in a position to allocate hostel accommodation for all. At the same time, including a provision on the hostel accommodation at the time of filling online application for admission gives necessary data of demand for hostel accommodation at various levels of courses and streams," said a HED official.

Shortage of hostel accommodation and laxity in augmenting data on growing demand for hostel accommodation left the government and university embarrassed not being able to provide even basic hostel accommodation for students.