Anna University publishes pass percentage of all engineering colleges afiliated to it

Updated on: Friday, June 21, 2013

Anna University on Thursday published the pass percentage of students in each of the 500-odd engineering colleges affliated to it, thus complying with an order of the Madras high court. The ranking came a day before counselling for admission to engineering courses begins, but professors said the data would not help students assess how good colleges are.

Though it was asked to publish the ranking before the start of counselling, the university waited for the court order to reach it. Candidates who were called for sports quota counselling were compelled to make their choices without this guidance.

Experts said the list offers no comparative data to check which institution performed the best - unless one were to calculate each college's pass percentage against the number of students across all semesters and work out how the students fared overall, and then compare the information to conclude which colleges are better than others.Last Friday, a division bench of acting Chief Justice RK Agrawal and Justice M Sathianarayanan passed orders on a public interest litigation filed by D Bhoobalasamy, a parent of a girl who is applying for engineering admission. Bhoobalasamy had said that many colleges did not have the required infrastructure and facilities and that people like him were unable to make an informed choice.

The petitioner argued that many colleges with similar names were confusing students. The division bench had directed the university to release the pass percentage of all the colleges with a separate identification for all colleges with similar names.The university has meticulously put out the pass percentage of students of each department in all the semesters. But, if students were looking for a pecking order, they are likely to be disappointed. The university seems to have arrived at a compromise, by publishing the pass percentages of all colleges, but not ranking them according to them. This is expected to appease colleges, who were against publishing a rank list based on pass rates, while following the court direction.

Anna University publishes pass percentage of all engineering colleges afiliated to it

More Education news