As many as 299 pre-university (PU) colleges — aided and unaided — across the State that have reported zero admissions for the past five years are set to shut down.
Officials from the Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE), which has served show-cause notices on these colleges, said that affiliation of these colleges would be withdrawn and permission to run them would be cancelled.
Out of the 299, the maximum number of colleges are in Bengaluru South (54), followed by Bengaluru North (35).
The department, which issued the notices two weeks ago, had initially given the college managements time to respond, but many did not, an official said. Some colleges approached the department, saying they were ready to close down the colleges owing to losses.
Sources in the department said that many of these colleges were as good as closed, but the management members had not officially completed the formalities.
“Although a couple of students have been approaching the colleges, the college managements themselves have decided not to enrol students as it is not economically viable for them to run them,” sources said.
Currently, there are 5,397 PU colleges in the State: 3,194 private unaided colleges, 1,232 government colleges, 797 aided, 161 composite PU colleges, and 13 corporation colleges.
‘No’ to new colleges
The DPUE had rejected more than 90% of the applications to start new PU colleges before the start of this academic year. Owing to the mushrooming of PU colleges, the department had tweaked the rules and had stated that colleges should have a minimum land requirement ranging from 1,000 sq m to 2,000 sq m within BBMP limits and other corporation areas. In other areas, land requirement ranged from 2,000 sq m to 4,000 sq m.
The Economic Survey of Karnataka 2018-19 had also addressed the issue of rise in the number of private PU colleges.
The number of such colleges was 3,194 in 2018-2019, up from 1,737 in 2010-2011. This was a 83.88 % increase. Government PU colleges, during the same period, rose by 3.36 %.
