– Mita Mukherjee

In a bid to attract bright students to its B.Tech courses, Bengal’s Jadavpur University is planning to withdraw itself from centralised counselling held by the state Joint Entrance Examination Board ( JEE) and conduct its own process of selecting students for admission to its undergraduate engineering cources immediately after the board announces the results of the state JEE board results, university officials said.

Till last year, admissions in the university’s B.Tech courses were held through centralised counselling held by the state JEE board along with other state-aided universities and government engineering colleges.

JU’s dean of engineering and technology, Partha Pratim Biswas said the main reason that prompted JU to take the decision to shift to independent counselling is delay on the part of the board to start the counselling process. JU and other state-aided universities are usually allowed to admit student on its own through decentralised counselling only when seats remain vacant even after multiple rounds of centralised counselling conducted by the board, that also conducts the state joint entrance test in engineering.

Over the past few years, it has been noticed that many bright students who hold higher ranks in JEE and want to study the B.Tech courses at JU, which still happens to be one of the most sought-after engineering institutions in the state and also in the country, do not take admission at JU because of the delay and get admitted to other institutions outside Bengal.

As a result of the delay in the counselling process, the start of academic session also gets delayed which affects the overall academic calendar of the university.

“We lose bright students because of the delay. As a chain effect we have to start the academic session late which affects the academic calendar. This is another reason that has prompted JU to have independent counselling immediately after the JEE board declares the entrance exam result,” Biswas told EducationWorld.

“The late start of the counselling affects the university in many other ways. An institution like ours can flourish if we can attract bright students. By losing the most meritorious students, our overall academic standards can decline. Research activities are bound to fall if we do not get meritorious students. This affects the university in achieving top ranks in national and international ranking. It is also not possible for the institution to maintain its brand name it has achieved after so many decades of imparting high standard education,” Biswas told EducationWorld.

The decision has been approved by the university’s academic council. It will be placed before the executive council, the varsity’s highest policy making body this month for final approval. The proposal will then be sent to the state government for its nod.

The university was empowered to conduct its own counselling for admitting students in engineering till 2008. Over the past few years the university had to struggle to fill all its seats in the engineering stream even in some of the most coveted subjects.

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