Dental colleges offer fee cut to fill seats

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, August 14

Staring at the possibility of a large number of their seats remaining vacant again, it is raining ‘sale’ as some dental colleges in the state are giving attractive offers to woo students.

At the end of the second round of counselling to make admissions on 1,230 BDS seats on Monday evening, 323 BDS seats were declared vacant. There are few students in some colleges.

Offering 100 BDS seats, Desh Bhagat Dental College, Mandi Gobindgarh, could fill only nine.

At Adesh Dental College, Bathinda, 47 out of its total 100 BDS seats remained vacant. At the dental colleges at Sunam and Ferozepur, 51 out of total 100 seats in each college were declared vacant even after the State Medical Education Department has relaxed the eligibility criteria for BDS admissions in the state.

Now, before the starting of the mop-up round of counselling, fixed for August 22, to fill the vacant seats, the management of some colleges is offering lower fee.

Some colleges have even hired commission agents to bring students with various offers and incentives in fee.

Even one dental college has reportedly offered the guarantee of ‘no fail’ in the exam to the students

To fill the vacant management quota seats, some dental colleges are offering students to pay government quota fee.

Under the management quota, Rs 2.20 lakh per year is the tuition fee for the BDS course. However for a government quota seat, the fee is Rs 1.65 lakh.

The offers range from reducing fee in the name of scholarship, waiving first semester fee and slashing hostel fee by half.

“These offers won’t benefit these colleges in the long run. The colleges should rather invest in good faculty, training existing one and improving the standard of education. Some dental colleges offering such faculty and training have no such crisis,” said Dr Raj Bahadur, Vice Chancellor of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences. The university is conducting counselling to fill the BDS seats.

Last year, 275 BDS seats remained vacant. In 2016-17, 543 BDS seats and in 2015-16 academic session, 540 seats remained vacant in 15 dental colleges of the state.