The wait is finally over, for engineering students at least. The State Government and the private engineering college managements have reached an agreement on key issues of seat sharing, annual fees and subsidies at a meeting held here on Friday.

Rejecting the Government’s proposal for a single CET (Common Entrance Test) for private and government quota admissions, private managements will retain the UGET (Undergraduate Entrance Test) by COMED-K. However, the Government offered to allot seats for private colleges that choose CET as their qualifying test.

Of the key decisions, the one to increase the annual fee for government seats in private colleges — accounting for half the seats on offer — from Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 30,000 will impact students the most. They will now have to cough up an additional Rs. 20,000 for an engineering degree, that too for the subsidised government quota. This decision follows private managements’ claim of having suffered huge losses in recent years.

Further, Higher Education Minister Arvind Limbavali announced that the seat sharing arrangement, where the government and private colleges will share seats equally, will remain unchanged. But, to appease private managements, the Government will go back on last year’s arrangement where private managements provided a Rs. 10,000 subsidy for “poor and meritorious” students. This year, the amount will be reimbursed to colleges from the State exchequer. The cut-off rank for this quota is 20,000 as requested by the colleges.
Private quota

The private quota seats will continue to entail a fee up to Rs. 1.25 lakh. Mr. Limbavali requested private investors to defer opening fresh engineering colleges, given the fact that over 11,000 seats were unfilled last year.