Get educated to get educated

State launches forms on the net; how many have access?

Students from Orissa pursuing higher education can now say goodbye to the traumatic college admission procedures. To make higher education accessible and affordable to all students, especially those from the backward districts of the state, its higher education department will soon be introducing e-admission in 59 junior colleges in the state. This pioneering plan has been drawn up for students aspiring to join plus-two classes in the upcoming session. What this means is that instead of rushing to big cities to get admission, students will now have the option of submitting all the myriad application forms through, say, cybercafes. “This is perhaps the first ever attempt in the country to extend e-admission facility at entry levels in government colleges. Now, a student living even in the Naxal-affected Malkangiri can fill up applications and apply for the BJB College of Bhubaneswar, about 500 km away from his place,” said educationist Dr BD Kar. Madhusudan Padhi, commissioner-cum-secretary of the department, informed that in the 2009-10 session, the department will allow e-admission in 50 government colleges. “We have further identified nine aided colleges of Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapada, Nayagarh, Sonepur, Nawarangpur, Rayagada, Boudh, Deogarh and Jharsuguda districts, where there are no government colleges, to become a part of this programme.” Easier said than done is what we suspect. For it is easy to claim that the net is the new revolution. What is conveniently forgotten that in the backward districts, not only are there very few access points (net connections, cybercafes) to the internet, but even for using those net connections, students have to firstly be computer literate. Unfortunately, the state presumes that an average educated child from a poor family will be net savvy; a grossly misplaced presumption. Notwithstanding that, the fact is that for other net savvy students, this is an amazing opportunity.The form will allow students to choose not only their favourite colleges but also provide them the option of applying to five colleges in one application. Praising the novelty of this programme, Divyajyoti Pradhan of BJB College of Bhubaneswar says: “It is amazing that a student can apply to so many colleges in Orissa, through a single form, even to a college hundreds of kilometres away from home!” Dr Bhagawan Jayasingh, principal of SCS college of Puri, told TSI “Since almost all government colleges have their own websites, students can now monitor the entire admission procedure through the Internet." Leading educationist Dr Ganeshwar Mishra has a word of caution: “This is no doubt a novel effort, but its success depends largely on the competence and willingness of the governmental machinery.” And that is something we don't have to worry about at all, eh...

-Dhrutikam Mohanty