Thiruvananthapuram: The state govt is actively considering a long-standing demand of self-financing engineering colleges to overhaul the prevailing engineering admission process in the state. The demand includes doing away with the entrance test as a prerequisite for shortlisting candidates for admission to engineering colleges.Kerala State Higher Education Council vice -chairperson Achuthsankar S Nair has been tasked with reviewing the engineering entrance and admission procedure. Self-financing engineering colleges have been urging the govt to either do away with the entrance test or to allow them to admit students to management quota seats on the basis of Plus Two marks. They have cited the practice followed by private engineering colleges in neighbouring states.According to available statistics, at least 20,000 engineering seats remain vacant in Kerala. Nearly 20 engineering colleges were shut down in the state in the past 10 years. A candidate who seeks admission to an engineering college in the state is required to have cleared the KEAM entrance test. Those who secure a normalised score of 10 are included in the rank list. The main argument of those who seek the abolition or dilution of the entrance exam is that by the time the entrance results are published and the admission process begins, self-financing colleges in the neighbouring states would already have filled a significant number of seats with Malayali students.There has also been criticism that the high academic standards set by APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University have contributed to attrition and failure rates among engineering students, especially in self-financing engineering colleges. Successive govts have faced demands to ease academic standards. Recently, the Save University Campaign Committee urged the state govt to withdraw from any move to do away with the year-out system in engineering colleges. The scrapping of the system, introduced to ensure minimum academic quality, would be disastrous, the committee warned.Nair, who was also a member of the former RVG Menon committee that recommended changes in the entrance examination system, said the govt was expected to constitute an expert committee soon. “The committee will look into all aspects, including whether the entrance exam is needed in the present context or whether some other mechanism should be introduced. There is enough time to examine all these issues,” Nair said.
