The university is back with its goof-ups. This time, the University of Mumbai (MU) has botched up the online admission process for students who’ve signed up for correspondence courses. Admissions to distance education courses closed on October 12.
Sources at the university told DNA on the condition of anonymity that there is a complete mismatch in 2,000 admission forms and their fee receipts. While seeking admission, students had to download two documents – the admission form and two fee challans – and students had to submit hard copies of these.
While the fee challan along with cash had to be paid at any branch of Bank of Maharashtra, a hard copy of the receipt from the bank along with the admission form had to be submitted to any distance education centre of the university.
At the same time, the fee details were submitted by the bank to Mahaonline. The students paid up fees ranging between Rs3,200 and Rs15,000 for various courses with various branches of Bank of Maharashtra during the admission process. Over 70,000 students have taken admission for which the university has collected over Rs40 crore as fees.
“While accepting fees, the bank has entered an incorrect cross-reference of the application number and the corresponding fee challan,” said the source at the university.
Director of the university’s Institute of Distance and Open Learning, professor D Harichandan, admitted that a slip-up had occurred in the process. “We are yet to identify 1,700 forms... We are trying to sort out the issue at the earliest,” said Harichandan.
Bank of Maharashtra’s chief manager, who only identified himself as Sinha, however, blamed Mahaonline. “We’ve been sending students’ fee records to Mahaonline twice or thrice a week but they didn’t check these. And now they’ve sent us an entire list of the mixed-up data,” said Sinha, adding that the university does not pay the bank for this job.
Sinha clarified that the number of forms mixed up was not 2,000. “It’s only about 640 admission forms, and we’re doing everything to rectify the problem.”
MCom enrollment doubles
Distance education has got a hit this year. More than 24,000 students have taken admission for part1 of master of commerce (M. Com) this year in distance education. Number of students admitted in 2011-12 was just 13,753.
