Despite school boards concluding exams early to expedite the results and ensure that the new academic year starts on time, there is chaos in admissions across courses in Maharashtra. Be it impending legal trouble in First Year Junior College (FYJC) admissions, additional CET for BBA/BMS courses or lack of clarity on changes in engineering admissions–students and colleges are left scrambling amid administrative confusion delaying the beginning of the new academic year considerably.
This year, the Class 10 and 12 board exams were purposefully held much earlier, with results announced within the first 15 days of May. However, admissions to various courses are currently stalled due to reasons such as lack of coordination, systemic issues, and matters unrelated to students but impacting them the most.
FYJC admissions
This is the first year that the Centralised Admission Process (CAP) has been expanded statewide. Since the announcement, it has been riddled with various issues. Initially, the expansion was questioned due to challenges specific to rural parts of Maharashtra, where such an online system was seen as unnecessary. Now, a new controversy has emerged after the state government decided to apply SC/ST/OBC reservation to non-minority seats in junior colleges run by minority trusts, without any formal announcement for the same.
Several minority trusts are planning to challenge this decision in court, along with a separate petition to be filed by the Maharashtra Association of Minority Educational Institutions. The legal battle is expected to cause further delays in a process already stalled by systemic lapses, especially due to the huge number of admission applications coming from across the state. The admission schedule has already been revised three times within a month, with the latest revision adding 10 days to the delay.
The principal of a junior college in the city said, “This sudden expansion has led to a huge jump in the number of admission applications for FYJC. Until last year, there would be a separate process per district, which dealt with close to 2.5lakh candidates at a time. Now with a single system across the state, it’s dealing with over 12 lakh applications at a time, requiring more time to process such a huge amount of data and thereby causing delay.”
Adding to this, the principal of a minority trust-run college said, “The expansion of CAP has already led to systemic issues, and amid that, the government decided to apply SC/ST/OBC reservation to admissions in minority institutions—which is forbidden by law. Had the government consulted stakeholders, these legal troubles could have been avoided.”
Another round of BBA/BMS CET
The state government’s decision to hold a second round of the Common Entrance Test (CET) for professional undergraduate courses such as BCA, BBA, BMS, and BBM—following a lukewarm response to the first round in April—has raised concerns about further delays in the admission process.
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Even though there are over 1 lakh seats for these courses across Maharashtra, only 61,666 students appeared for CET. As a result, many colleges offering these courses expressed concern about large vacancies, prompting the decision to hold another round of CET.
The date for the second CET is yet to be announced. Its registration, conduct, result declaration, and the subsequent CAP are expected to take considerable time, which colleges fear could throw the new academic calendar off track.
However, some colleges believe that this may not be a solution as a prolonged wait could eventually lead to vacancies in traditional courses such as BCom.
The principal of one of the colleges explained, “Many students aspiring to take admission to these professional courses generally take backup admissions in BCom. As soon as admissions to these courses are completed, such students are likely to leave their BCom seats. This will result in vacancies in the traditional stream.”
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Changes in engineering admissions
The MHT-CET result is expected on June 16, after which engineering admissions are set to begin in Maharashtra. However, the state government has announced plans to introduce major changes to the CAP for engineering, though no formal guidelines have been issued yet. With the MHT-CET result just days away, this delay in releasing the revised admission guidelines has left many colleges worried about a potential setback to the start of the academic year.
“There are news reports about changes expected in the engineering admissions this year. But the government has not issued any formal guidelines for the same. Without knowing the new process, we are unsure if that will cause any issue but the uncertainty has certainly caused concerns of delay,” said the principal of an engineering college in Mumbai.