Has unfriendly DOST hit degree admissions?

Warangal: Notwithstanding the fact that there are around 1.08 lakh undergraduate seats up for grabs, there were no takers for more than half of the seats in degree colleges under Kakatiya University (KU) this academic year.

Out of the nearly 1.08 lakh BA/BCom/BSc and other degree courses in 290 colleges spread across Warangal, Khammam and Adilabad erstwhile districts under the ambit of KU, only about 52,000 seats have been filled at the end of the fifth and final phase of the counselling.

Although engineering and medicine streams are the popular choices of the students, student enrolment in degree colleges fell to this low in the varsity.

“Since the government introduced Degree Online Services of Telangana (DOST) three years ago, the student enrolment for the degree admissions is on the slide,” an official working with the DOST told The Hans India, on condition of anonymity.

The shortcomings in the process of DOST admissions pointed out by him indicates the kind of chaos it created among the students. For example: Majority of students who have no knowledge of online process largely depended on Mee Seva centres.

It was alleged that Mee Seva operators who created user names and passwords for students’ enrolment misused them by changing their choice of college names.

If a student wanted to edit the erroneously entered mobile number in the online application, the faulty software kept sending the one-time password (OTP) to the same (erroneously entered) number.

Principal of a reputed private degree college in the city said: “Lack of awareness among the students about the online process, and the incompetent software used by the authorities are some of the main reasons that hurt the enrolment.”

“If the authorities allow spot admissions, it will help the colleges to get some more admissions,” he said, urging the authorities to create awareness about online admissions among the students in the final year of their junior college.

Although the enrolment took a nosedive, the highlight is that nearly 75 per cent of the students opted for English medium. It’s also learnt that while some colleges were able to get just around 30 per cent admissions of their quota, 20 others witnessed zero enrolment.

Against this backdrop, the existence of some colleges have become questionable. It also raises a question that whether several degree courses other than BSc and BCom would really serve the purpose of the students who wanted to make it big in the highly competitive world.