‘Chancellor Portal’ disappoints students

The online admission procedure through Chancellor Portal being introduced from the current academic session in Jharkhand is yet to begun in a full-fledged way.

Leaving out students in complete despair gearing up to get enrolled in any of these 66 constituent colleges and 64 affiliated colleges functioning under eight State owned universities, the Chancellor Portal until now does not contain any relevant information available that can serve the purpose of the applicants.

As on May 15, the Chancellor Portal, a centralised platform, that should have details ranging from course modules to fees structure to number of seats available in different streams, none of the facts have been uploaded containing all basic records of colleges.

The site is developed and hosted by National Informatics Centre (NIC) while the contents of the Website are being managed by the Department of Higher, Technical Education and Skill Development. Details like contact number, address, E-Mail, official website along with the description of faculty members, present student strength are yet to be uploaded on the site for reference.

Furthermore, list of subjects offered in colleges under Sido-Kanhu Murmu University, Nilambar Pitamber University, Jharkhand Raksha Shakti University have not been updated with subject code, subject name, stream and subject type stating ‘no data is available under this category’.

Meanwhile, the remaining universities like Ranchi University (RU), Vinoba Bhave University, Hazaribagh, including Kolhan University have just uploaded the details of subjects offered by the respective universities leaving rest all other columns either blank or incomplete.

Also, description of colleges –Affiliated, Autonomous and Constituent--has to be on the website. However, except a few colleges, none of the minority degree colleges under RU or else other State owned varsities have uploaded the basic details for candidates’ reference.

Taking up different factor that governs the students’ choice in selecting a college, incomplete information about colleges and tangled online process will not just create chaos in the days to come but will predominately affect Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) of  all such universities located in interior belts.

When contacted the officials of the State’s biggest university to know their take on this, none of the officials were clear about any detail or even about the dates of admission in different Under-Graduation (UG) and Post-Graduation (PG) courses for this academic year.

“Issue of fees (for application forms) is yet to be finalized. All colleges have been asked to charge a common fee from the students for admission forms. Also, we are waiting for the board exam results which are yet to be released. Soon, a nodal official will be recruited to keep a track of the university in uploading the details on Chancellor Portal,” said Officer (PR), RU, Dr. PK Jha.

Considering the present pace of work, the ambitious initiative of the Department of Higher, Technical Education and Skill Development to ease the burden and reduce glitches during two major proceedings—admissions and filling examination applications carried out by the varsities annually is likely to get deferred for some more time.

“If all universities give their consent to uniform fees structure, then by May end, all important documents will be uploaded,” added Jha.

Director, Higher Education (Directorate), Abu Imran was not available for comments.