Govt junior colleges in State face uncertainty as strength dwindles

Hyderabad: Are government high schools becoming potential poaching areas for the private unaided junior colleges in the state? If the latest developments are any indication, the strength of students in the first year of the Inter courses stands at 85,038 and 78,799 in the second year in 416 government junior colleges.

Raising the issues, the Warangal, Khammam, Nalgonda Teachers Constituency, MLC, Alugubelli Narsi Reddy said, “every government junior college has MPC, BIPC, CEC and HEC groups.” Each

government junior college should have strength of 320 students. If 40 students are admitted in each group and each year of the two-year intermediate course.

However, there are 25 government junior colleges with less than 100 students, and 75 junior colleges have less than 200 students. Contrary to this, some areas, like Government Junior Colleges in Hussaini Alam, Mahbubnagar, Tandur in Vikarabad and Nampally in Hyderabad, have student strength from 1,500 to 2,000.

The Government Vocational Junior College in Nalgonda has strength of 1,200 students.

As against this, the private unaided junior colleges have strength of about 2.5 lakh students, most of them studying in the MPC group.

He pointed out that during the 2022-23 academic year, about 2,44,254 students were studying in the first year and 1,31,404 students in the second year intermediate course in the unaided private junior colleges in the state. And, these students were enrolled in the MPC group. Against this, only 12,158 students have been admitted to the MPC group in the Government Junior Colleges.

Also, there are about 30 Government Junior Colleges which have only 10 students in each of the four groups.

The aggressive marketing of the Unaided Private Junior College management took away most of the students who studied Class X in the government schools and scored higher GPAs. Students who have scored less GPA and those who passed in compartmental mode in Class X are joining Government Junior Colleges.

This situation is leaving the Government Junior Colleges facing dwindling student strength and running classes with nominal strengths in different groups combinations of the two-year intermediate course. The reason is that Government Junior Colleges fail to attract the best students who have completed their Class X in government-run schools.

The teachers’ MLC points out that the curious issue is that those students who have scored better in their Class X while studying in government-run schools fail after joining the intermediate courses in private unaided schools. At the same time, the shrinking strength in the Government Junior Colleges left their fate and future in the doldrums.