Ranga Reddy: Over 66,000 seats remain vacant in OU degree colleges

Ranga Reddy: The delay in admissions due to Covid and least interest by the students towards technical courses have left thousands of seats in degree colleges unfilled under the Osmania University for the year 2020-21. According to sources, a total of 66,000 seats could not be filled.

Most of the degree colleges under Osmania University are in Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medak districts. These colleges have been given recognition on behalf of the varsity and seats in degree colleges were filled annually by the Board of Higher Education under the Dost (Degree Online Services, Telangana) programme.

There are 352 colleges under the Dost programme within the varsity and another 45 colleges have been conducting admissions through offline process. Dost recently completed degree admissions. While there are 1,48,210 seats in Osmania University, only 85,079 have been filled with 63,131 seats remaining. Also, while there are about 15,000 seats in offline colleges, it is estimated that there are 3,000 seats left.

The remaining seats are mostly in public and private unaided colleges. The DOST programme has 1,10,855 seats in 287 colleges in the private unaided sector. Of these, only 57,805 seats were filled. Seats are reserved in all colleges except Railway and Private (Autonomous) Colleges.

Degree admissions, which were delayed due to corona, continued till December end.

Further, the government's decision to pass Intermediate students without supplementary exams has led to more and more students showing interest in taking the degree courses. Admissions were higher compared to last year. However, considering the available seats, it is low. In fact, for the academic year 2018-19, 81,000 students joined and for the year 2019-20, a total of 84,077 students took degree admissions.

The Board of Higher Education has announced zero admissions in 10 colleges this time. Although there are students in second and third year of the degree courses, there are none in the first year. After the graduation of current second and third year students, these colleges are likely to close.