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Friday, July 11, 2014

Colleges end up with too many more BSc aspirants than they can accommodate -AMEET OBEROI

GANGTOK, 10 July: This academic year, almost all government colleges have taken in more students than they can accommodate with most of the ‘surplus’ admissions being in the Science Stream, which was already facing problems such as less than the required number of classrooms and more students than the colleges have laboratory facilities for. BSc students at the Gangtok college for instance, will need to be attended to in batches for them to be able to use the labs, without which an education in science cannot be imparted, at least not in the college level.
Speaking to NOW!, Director [Higher Education], Deepa Basnett, confirmed that this year there was a problem with the admissions in the Science stream in both the colleges in Sikkim – Gangtok and Namchi - which offer BSc courses. Neither college is equipped to accommodate more than 50 to 100 students at a maximum, but have both given admission to more than 200-plus students this year. Turning away students was not an option because South district alone has more than 30 senior secondary schools that offer Science stream in +2.
Be that as it may, the colleges are not equipped to take in that many students.
SGC, Gangtok, is an old campus built quite some time ago and now has a different building for the science stream and can accommodate upto 100 students, but NGC was not built with this in mind and does not have a separate building for the science stream. NGC was not built as a science academy as there is space constraint and the number of Bio-Science students is more than in Pure Science [60-40] so it is not possible to accommodate 200 plus students where there are only 50 possible, she stated.
“We have also started a college at Rhenock and now the department is proposing to start a new Science stream there as well. Since a new government has only just been formed, the proposal has been kept on hold,” she said and added that there was under-enrolment in the Rhenock College as students don’t want to go that far, preferring colleges in Gangtok or Namchi.
“The students are not going to the college where there is vacancy but are opting for colleges which are over-crowded. Even a girls’ hostel is coming up near the Rhenock Government College [RGC] and for the boys we are in touch with people living around the college to provide paying guest facilities till the boys hostel comes up,” the Director added further.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to supplement infrastructure at the colleges and there is a new Chemistry lab coming up at SGC as Chemistry is a common subject to both Bio Science and Pure Science and given the present number of students there are around 30-40 students who need to be accommodated in the labs. And this has made the colleges conduct practical classes in shifts which begin at 9 a.m. in the morning and continue till 5 in the evening and still the colleges are facing problems.
So now the colleges have asked the department to allow the colleges to start a morning shift to accommodate all the students to use the lab facility, she informed.
Earlier, the department offered 500 quota seats for admission in colleges outside the state but now students are not even taking up these seats.
“We even have our college study centre at the Indira Gandhi National Open University [IGNOU] which is offering Bachelor in Science [BSc] courses and the last date for admission was 08 July, but on request they have also shifted the last date of admission to 31 July,” she stated.
And then there is also the problem of lack of Science teachers in the schools and colleges. “We had even advertised for ad-hoc teachers but unfortunately there were no applicants from any local candidates for the posts of science teachers, especially for mathematics, physics and chemistry which are the main subjects of pure science,” the Director informed. “So we have taken a special government approval to appoint non-local teachers on ad hoc,” she added.
“But the problem here is that according to UGC norms candidates who have passed NET/SLET can be paid only around Rs. 21,000 on ad hoc appointments which is very little so we are worried that these posts will remain vacant,” she shared.
“One college needs a minimum of four faculty members for the science stream which has not been possible so far since there are not many local candidates who have applied for the post. However, we have advertised again for science teachers in various colleges and we will have to wait and see how many apply for the posts for ad hoc appointments”, the Director stated.

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