Private colleges urged Government to scrap JET

Even as Punjab government is preparing to hold stateide joint entrance test for admission to polytechnic colleges, the demand by private colleges to discontinue the test has grown louder. With less than one-fourth seats being filled than the students taking the exams, the futility of the exercise, proving to be expensive for the cash-strapped government, is being questioned.

The JET is conducted for admission in polytechnic colleges of Punjab and is followed by online counselling for filling of seats. Last year, around 1.2 lakh students applied for the entrance test and less than 90,000 students finally took the test. However, at the end of the exercise, which involved the teachers, principals, employees of the education department in holding the exam at over 400 examination centres in the state, less than one-fourth seats were filled. This has led to a large number of seats falling vacant in the state's colleges. Out of the 53,000 seats in polytechnics across the state, only 35,000 were filled last year, with 20,000 seats falling vacant.

A delegation of Punjab Unaided Technical Institutions Association had met the principal secretary technical education, A R Talwar, on Thursday last week and demanded that JET be scrapped.