GUWAHATI, May 24 - The State committee of the Students� Federation of India (SFI) has drawn the attention of the State Government to the poor state of education in Assam. It has also announced a plan to undertake a month-long campaign from June 1 against the �excessive fees� charged by private BEd colleges and for introduction of BEd courses in all public degree colleges.
The students� body had met the Director of Higher Education (DHE) on May 17 and demanded a planned increase in the number of seats in the colleges by developing their infrastructure, including appointment of adequate numbers of teachers. Every year students face problems due to shortage of adequate seats.
Moreover, the students� body demanded a centralised admission process in the city. Students intending to get admission into a particular college of their choice, have to take admission in other colleges due to the chaotic admission schedules. The DHE assured proper steps in this regard.
The students� body also resented the poor state of technical education in Assam. Government engineering colleges are suffering due to shortage of teachers. In Assam Engineering College, three departments have been running without any permanent faculty. The Electrical Department of Bineshwar Brahma Engineering College (BBEC) has no permanent faculty and the Chemical Engineering Department of the college has only one teacher.
The Barak Valley Engineering College, the academic session of which will start from this year, has recruited only guest faculties. Infrastructure, including laboratories and hostels, is poor in the Jorhat Institute of Science and Technology and the BBEC.
Again, the construction of engineering colleges in Golaghat, Dhemaji, Udalguri and Nagaon is going on at a very slow pace. Recently, it has come to notice that AEC and Jorhat Engineering College will be affiliated to Assam Science and Technology University (ASTU), which will be detrimental to their interests since a lot of private engineering colleges have already got themselves affiliated to the ASTU and these colleges will have an upper hand in the decision-making process.
The SFI maintained that the government status of these two colleges having a glorious history must be protected and through a proper discussion with the stakeholders, they should be upgraded into deemed universities.