The admissions in the science stream seem to be losing its shine while earlier it has always been the first choice for most students. This year, 82,623 or about 40 percent seats of the total first-year junior college (FYJC) are vacant for the science subject.
Recently, for streams such as science, arts, commerce and minimum competency vocational courses (MCVC), around 35 percent of the 5,60,962 seats are vacant even after the closing of the online admission for the 2019-2020 academic year. About 1.9 lakh seats are vacant in junior colleges that follow the Maharashtra State Board syllabus.
Around, 25 percent of the 2,53,277 seats are found vacant for commerce stream. Of 78,552 seats, about 36,458 are still available in the arts stream, while in MCVC, 9,681 of the total 21,310 seats are vacant. The number of vacant FYJC seats, 1,08,066, is highest in the Mumbai division, followed by Pune at 36,858 seats.
In the MMR region, mostly there are seats vacant for the science stream (46,920) followed by commerce stream (42,523).
Across 90 colleges, 5-8 percent of seats were increased to provide SSC students with a level playing field with other boards this year. This had been done because of the 12 percent fall observed in the passing percentage for SSC compared to last year after the oral exams were scrapped. Therefore, the school education department has restarted oral exams for SSC students.
