Karachi, Around 30,000 seats in the city’s public sector colleges and higher secondary schools are set to remain vacant, as the centralised admission policy (CAP) committee received only around 70,000 placement forms till the last date of submission against the 100,015 seats available in the institutions for the coming academic session.

A dramatic drop in the number of applicants seeking admission to government colleges and higher secondary schools for the forthcoming academic year not only surprised the academics but also clearly indicated that about 30 per cent of the fresh matriculates had preferred to take admission to private colleges and thus giving credence to critics who had earlier described the CAP-2010 as a ‘pro-private colleges policy’.

The other factors responsible for the small number of applications have been attributed to the city’s poor law and order situation, deteriorating standards of education in the government colleges, particularly because of teachers’ shortage, a lack of discipline, increasing interference of politically backed student organisations and unjust allocation of faculty-wise seats.

Over 112,000 candidates had passed their matriculation and equivalent examinations this year. They included 107,000 fresh matriculates from the Board of Secondary Education, Karachi (BSEK), about 5,000 O Level and those who passed their matriculation from the Sindh Board of Technical Education and other than the BSEK. But the number of placement forms received by the CAP committee on the last date that ended on Monday was about 70,000.

It means that a huge number of over 42,000 students have not shown any interest in getting admission to the public sector colleges and higher secondary schools of the metropolis.

Asked how many of over 42,000 fresh matriculates who had not applied for admission to government colleges and higher secondary schools and how many of them might have stopped pursuing further studies, senior academicians, who had remained associated with the education department, said the dropout rate at the matriculation level did not go beyond 1 and 1.5 per cent, a vast majority of over 30,000 must have preferred to take admission to private colleges.

The process of admission to the city’s 132 government colleges and 25 higher secondary schools under CAP initially began on July 23 and continued for as many as 38 days till Monday with at least four extensions given one after another in the deadlines fixed for submitting placement forms.

A number of senior professors of government colleges contended that the CAP-2010 was aimed at encouraging students to seek admission to private colleges. “Isn’t it amazing that the number of candidates who did their matriculation with science in A-1, A and B grades from the BSEK alone was 58,351, whereas only 42,165 seats were available in all the three faculties of science in the city’s public-sector institutions for the coming academic session?” said a senior professor.

“How the parents of fresh matriculates who already knew after going through the CAP brochure that not only all the C, D and E graders but even 16,186 B graders will not be able to get admission to the science faculty in government institutions would ask their wards to apply for admission to government colleges,” remarked another professor who had worked as a member of the CAP committee in the past.

“Isn’t it shocking that though the number of candidates seeking admission to the government colleges and higher secondary schools are far less than the number of seats available in them, over 16,000 B-grade matriculates will be among the thousands of aspirants for science education who are set to be deprived of studies in any of the three science groups — pre-engineering, pre-medical and computer science — in the city’s public sector educational institutions owing to the limited number of seats in the discipline.”

Moreover, more than 39,000 matriculates are unlikely to be accommodated in the pre-engineering, pre-medical and computer science groups in the city’s government colleges and higher secondary schools, they said.

The number of seats allocated by the CAP committee in its 2010 academic year’s brochure, containing placement forms for admission to first-year classes, shows that of the total 42,165 seats allocated for admission to the science faculty, in all 23,830 seats (15,250 for boys and 8,580 for girls) will be offered in the pre-engineering group; 16,835 (5,740 for boys and 11,095 for girls) in the pre-medical group and 1,500 (800 for boys and 700 for girls) would be accommodated in the computer science group.

According to the statistics of the fresh science matriculates issued by the BSEK, of the total 81,981 (45,403 boys and 36,578 girls) candidates, who have passed the examination in different grades, 10,524 candidates (3,951 boys and 6,573 girls) obtained A-1 grades; 21,862 candidates (10,599 boys and 11,263 girls) secured A grade and 25,965 candidates (14,563 boys and 11,402 girls) got B grade; 18,178 candidates (11,937 boys and 6,241 girls) secured C grade; 5,120 candidates (4,105 boys and 1,015 girls) got D grade whereas 95 candidates (82 boys and 13 girls) got E grade.

However, the students who did their matriculation with general group as regular candidates would not face any difficulty in getting admission to their discipline as the total number of admissions being offered in government colleges and higher secondary schools in commerce and humanities groups are 34,470 seats (20,300 for boys and 14,170 for girls) and 22,780 (5,400 for boys and 17,380 for girls), respectively.