Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, Feb 14: State run institutions have consistently performed poorly in the implementation of self-financing courses that aim to prepare the students for various jobs, said the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
There is an absence of uniform guidelines for administration of self-financing courses in educational institutions in the state, noted the audit report of the CAG.
A committee of vice-chancellors had been constituted in 2005 to prepare model guidelines to be submitted to the government. In the absence of such guidelines, Sambalpur University (SU) and Utkal University (UU) have created their own set of guidelines but these have a lot of loopholes such as the lack of mention of the manner of selection of courses, sharing of infrastructure and selection of faculty.
Besides, some institutions have introduced self-financing courses without evaluation of commercial viability or utility.
The CAG has revealed that there were not even 10 students for three self -financing courses launched by Berhampur University (BU). Also student enrolment dropped from 87 per cent to about 23 per cent during 2012-13 for the Master in Pharmacy course at UU. IT courses at SU have also had only 51 per cent enrolment.
The CAG has also pointed out lack of uniformity in course fees across institutes. The course fee should be fixed by the institutions after consolation with the government. The government has fixed course fee of Rs 45,000 for Bachelor of Computer Applications at UU, but the varsity charges Rs 90,000. It charges almost double for the Bachelor of Business Administration course here.
The money collected by the institutions has been used to pay guest lecturers and for the maintenance of laboratories, but not for infrastructural development.
The registrar of SU said the university was empowered to decide the course fee depending upon the nature of the course and its demand.
The CAG has also pointed to the lack of infrastructure, poor student-teacher ratio, appointment of under-qualified faculties, selection of faculty without the required specialisation, inadequate coverage of curriculum, holding combined classes of different courses and inadequate placement opportunities.