City govt colleges make Rs 20 cr from admissions

Ishrat S Banwait

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 12 

After going cashless this year, city government colleges earned Rs 20 crore from admissions. It is for the first time that the payment of fee has been made cashless and is possible only through online transaction or via debit/credit cards and bank drafts. Over 20,000 students have been admitted to five city government colleges. 

The Department of Higher Education has said that from next year, private colleges will also be asked to go cashless.  While government colleges do not have point of sale machines, fee payment is done at sampark centres. 

“The option will be available all around the year for clearing various dues,” informed Director (Higher Education) R Popli. “The system has made the payment process easy for students and it proved to be a great success,” he added. 

Student details go online 

The Higher Education Department is also working towards improving websites of city colleges. The websites will now have complete information of each student, including their subjects, attendance. The academic calendar of each department and timetable have already been uploaded on the websites along with infrastructure and faculty details.  

As many seats have been left vacant, the colleges are now filling these seats on their own without adhering to the quota provision of 85 per cent and 15 per cent for students belonging to the UT and general pools, respectively. Till last year, colleges admitted students on merit but centralised counselling meant that they had to follow the ratio due to which a large number of students from outside UT could not get admission to city colleges. 

 The department is still considering centralised counselling for BA from next year. The department has also asked the PU to hand over BCom counselling to colleges from next year which.