Students confused on seat sharing & fee structure

The Karnataka higher education minister VS Acharya declared that the fee structure and seat sharing for undergraduate engineering colleges in the state has left about 1.17 lakh students in utter confusion.

According to previous reports, Acharya said that those colleges interested in joining hands with the government and willing to accept the fee slab of Rs32,500 imposed by the state can enter into a seat sharing arrangement, in the ratio of 55:45, with 45% of the seats being filled by candidates eligible for admission after the Common Entrance Test results are considered.And of 184 engineering colleges,about 130 colleges have shown interest in entering into a seat sharing arrangement with the government.

Now, the students are left with one question: who will offer them seats in the colleges? Will it be the state government or the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental colleges of Karnataka (COMED-K)?

Under Section 6 of Karnataka Professional Education Institutions Act 8, the government has to appoint a fee determination committee to fix fees for all the colleges. As of now, however, the state government is depending on the report of the committee, and colleges would be expected to follow the recommendations of the Padmaraj committee.

But what will be the criteria for admission? It has been stated that the colleges could exercise a choice in the matter: “The government CET, the COMED-K or UGET, the option of which test to use for admitting students is left to colleges."

Meanwhile, some college managements unwilling to accept the government proposal on fee structure and seat sharing have decided to follow the ranking after the COMED-K results are announced.This indicates that admission to such colleges will then be open only to those students who have taken the COMED-K examination.

Therefore, students who have taken only the CET and not the COMED-K wonder whether prime colleges in the city will thus be out of bounds for them.