Professional colleges have decided to cut short festival and summer vacations for students this year, due to the delayed start of the academic year on account of the delay in conducting counselling for admission to engineering, pharmacy, MBA, MCA, M.Tech, M. Pharmacy and B.Ed courses.
The admissions were delayed due to various court cases following the row over fee hike, fee reimbursement etc.
The universities have directed the managements of professional colleges to cut short Dasara, Diwali, Christmas and Sankranti festivals by half to make up for the loss of working days.
Accordingly, the managements have declared Dasara vacation only for four days from October 22 against the 10 days earlier. The same norms will be followed for Diwali, Christmas and Sankranti.
Professional colleges have to function for 180 days in an academic year as per the UGC and AICTE norms, but four months were lost this year due to the delayed admissions.
Academic planner to be rescheduled
The Jawaharlal Nehru Technological Universities located in Hyderabad, Anantapur and Kakinada, under which over 90 per cent of the professional colleges function, have issued circular to the managements to reschedule their academic planner by reducing holidays by half during the festive season from October to January.
Professional colleges, which normally declare summer vacation for one-and-a-half months from April to May, were asked to function even during the summer holidays ex-cept for two weeks in May.
“Students who were allotted seats in the second phase of the recently-concluded Eamcet engineering counselling, are currently in the process of taking admissions. Since about one lakh seats have remained vacant, the managements will conduct spot admissions on their own to fill them.
"The process will take the whole month, which means classes will begin only from November. Unless we cut short the holidays, it is not possible to meet the 180 working days norm from now,” explained JNTU-Hyderabad registrar Prof. N.V. Ramana Rao.