In a bid to streamline the admission process and facilitate access to higher education, the Gujarat government launched a common admission portal, named GCAS (Gujarat Common Admission Service).
Though the initiative aims to simplify the admission procedure for undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) courses across 15 state universities, it seems to have raised further concerns among the applicants, than provide a streamlined experience to them.
One prominent issue that has emerged is the absence of crucial details such as fees and available seats for each college listed on the portal.
The students are required to submit their preferences for colleges in the order of their choice through the online portal. This preference submission window will remain open until June 10. Following this, a provisional admission allotment will be announced on June 12.
While Gujarat Technological University (GTU) and Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University are separately conducting the admission procedure, 11 universities will be opting for the GCAS portal and merit-based allotment.
The Gujarat University (GU) and Sardar Patel University (SPU) are conducting online admissions where students are unable to rank their preferred colleges in the order of priority at the time of registration. The students will have no control on college preference and therefore, they may not secure admission to their desired colleges.
Moreover, the demand for admission to Gujarat University remains high, with over 73,500 students vying for UG courses against a backdrop of more than 55,000 available seats.
University babus not responding?
“There are some drawbacks of the GCAS portal. I was unable to verify my mail ID and contact number even after inserting the OTP,” said a PG course aspirant at Gujarat University.
“On informing the University that the technical support on the given helpline number is not answering the calls, they had nothing but vague solutions to offer,” she added.
The aspirant also raised concerns about the file size which was kept too short for uploading documents on the portal. “We are even unable to upload the documents sometimes on the portal,” added the PG course aspirant.
The students voiced for a better online as well as an offline support system for admission as it is not at all easy.