- 50:50 seat matrix scrapped
- Single cutoffs to be maintained for both genders
- Reservations to continue as before
Admission merit for colleges in Karnataka will now be gender neutral. In a move that gives girls and boys an equal chance to study at Karnataka’s best pre-university (PU) colleges, the department of PU education dispensed with its ruling that colleges must maintain a 50:50 ratio between both genders during admission.
Reservations for categories such as SC/ST/OBC will continue as before. Colleges have now been asked to enroll students purely on their merit while keeping these reservation categories in mind.
Why The Change In Admission Merit For Colleges In Karnataka?
Among the 825,468 students who appeared for the SSLC Class 10 exams in 2019, 608,336 cleared the exams. This brought the overall pass percentage to 73.7%. However, the result was not the same for boys and girls.
While girls had a pass percentage of 79.59%, only 68.46% of the boys cleared the exam. This is a standalone result but a trend that has been seen for quite a few years now.
Till date, the DPUE ruling specified that colleges must have an equal number of girls and boys at the time of admission. As a result, many girls with a higher percentage lost out of seats that instead were given to boys with a lower percentage.
Some colleges put out different cutoffs for girls and boys to maintain gender balance. While colleges maintained that if they did not create separate cutoffs, many of them would have only girls as students, students and parents felt that it was discriminatory and girls were being forced to pay a high price for doing well academically.
The new rule will come into effect his year. However, given that most colleges have already announced two cut-off lists, the new ruling will be followed from the third list onward.
Academicians have applauded the new ruling saying that it will help meritorious students and will level the playing field.
