No monitoring body for college admissions

MUMBAI: Don’t expect Big Brother to be watching over college admissions this year. The University of Mumbai won’t be appointing a committee to monitor admissions at the city’s various colleges this year, because it no longer has the power to do so.
A government resolution dated April 16 states that the responsibility of ensuring transparency and merit-based admissions now rests with individual colleges.According to the resolution, the university can only act on complaints lodged by students or parents.
“We no longer have the right to monitor the entire process,’’ Mumbai university vice-chancellor B.L. Mungekar said on Tuesday. Since 1996, a varsity observer committee monitored fee structures and ensured that colleges did not charge extra money for admission forms or demanded donations.
Adding to the chaos is the fact that the recently appointed Educational Institutions Regulatory Authority, which is supposed to regulate the fee structures for both aided and unaided colleges, has yet to start functioning. Each college is now supposed to get its fee structure approved by the authority.
However, since the authority isn’t functioning, “We are very confused,’’ said SIES College of Commerce principal V. Bhide.
Attempting to quell fears that large-scale confusion will dog the admissions process, minister for higher education Laxmanrao Dhoble said that the authority “knows its work’’ and will begin functioning in a day or two.