Rajasthan: For CBSE students, no guarantee of place

Being a CBSE student is tough in Rajasthan these days. Even if they secure 95 per cent marks, there is no guarantee of a place in the constituent colleges of state universities. The equivalence method based on comparative percentiles of CBSE and Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) has put the latter in extremely advantageous position. For example, to get admission in B Com pass course in Maharani College the cut-off for a CBSE girl student in general category was 95.80% compared to 87.60% for a RBSE student. The gap widens to 12% for a boy seeking admission in Commerce College. A CBSE student needed 92.4% whereas RBSE student would get the seat with just 80.6% marks.

It would mean that chances of CBSE students getting admission in prestigious colleges under DU or JNU is far better than in the constituent colleges of the Rajasthan University.

In Rajasthan College, only one CBSE student made it to first cut-off list of 480 for BA pass course; only 88 from 660 for B. Com pass course in Commerce College were CBSE students, 11 out of 565 in B. SC in Maharaja College and only 13 in all three streams put together in Maharani College for Girls. Even the self financing scheme is full of RBSE students. The situation is same across the state. Government’s decision to increase 10% seats failed to provide any relief to the CBSE students.

Over many years, CBSE students were having upper hand in admissions but situation was not as grim for RBSE students as it is for CBSE student now. Ever since this formula came into effect, number of CBSE students has reduced to less than 5% in some colleges.

The formula was injected by minister for higher education Kalicharan Saraf two years ago. The argument in support of this percentile formula was that CBSE and students from other state boards have been getting higher percentages because of lenient marking resulting in dwindling number of RBSE students in colleges and universities’ merit lists.

To bridge this gap, he had asked the universities to admit students on the basis of a percentile-based merit list of each board. The percentile method has resulted in the sharp decline in the number of CBSE students in the government colleges across the state while students from other states and open schools have managed to get more seats than CBSE students, which means his formula has only worked against CBSE students.

However, many people suspect it to be an exercise to cover up government schools inability to provide quality education and come up with good results. President of Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan, Damodar Prasad Goyal said that the current system was affecting academic standard of state universities. “What the minister has been trying is to create equality among unequal. The real problem is that RBSE students are not performing well but this is not the solution,” he said.

“Is it a crime to be a CBSE student,” asked Garima Rathore who got 85 per cent marks but even after 7th list nowhere close to make a cut. This is not fair, she added. The system is particularly harsh on BSE students from backward categories. In the general category, at least a couple of students made it to the list but in OBC, SBC, SC and ST, it is hard to find a single CBSE student in list of couple of hundreds. The meager government scholarship is not a fraction of private college fee, which is almost 10 times of a government college.