How Gujarat’s centralized admission system is promoting privatization

By Prof. Kanu Khadadiya, Rimmi Vaghela, Prof. Hemantkumar Shah 

We participated in a recent protest organized by the All India Save Education Committee outside Gujarat University against the Gujarat Common Admission Services (GCAS) system that has been introduced over the last few years for admissions to government colleges after Class 12.

The reasons why GCAS should be withdrawn are as follows:

The Gujarat government implemented an online admission system called GCAS from May 2024 for undergraduate and postgraduate admissions in disciplines such as Arts, Commerce, Science, Journalism, Law, Education, Computer Education, Rural Studies, Public Health and others. This system has created serious difficulties for students and parents in higher education, and therefore it should be withdrawn immediately. Colleges and universities must be given autonomy in admission matters. The GCAS system has been introduced for 497 courses across 35 universities and 2,765 colleges and departments in Gujarat, and it has led to confusion and hardship on a large scale. Hence, the GCAS system should be scrapped immediately.

First, GCAS has imposed a heavy financial burden on students and parents. A fee of Rs 300 has been fixed for admission under this system for every student, though this year it has been reduced to Rs 150 for SC and ST students. Around three lakh students seek undergraduate admissions and nearly 50,000 students seek postgraduate admissions in Gujarat every year. This means parents are directly burdened with nearly Rs 10 crore in fees. Before GCAS, admissions could usually be completed for about Rs 50. Moreover, students and parents who are unable to complete the online process themselves are forced to visit cyber cafés, where they spend an additional Rs 300 to Rs 500. Rural students face even more hardship because many villages do not have cyber cafés, forcing them to travel to taluka headquarters at extra cost.

Second, the admission process now stretches up to December. Last year there were 32 rounds of undergraduate admissions. Although Class 12 results were declared in May, the admission process continued until December, consuming more than six months. Students who managed to secure admission in the first semester hardly got a month to study before examinations arrived in January. Before GCAS, colleges themselves handled admissions, and the entire process was completed within about fifteen days, with teaching generally beginning in the first week of July. Under GCAS, the process drags on until December despite claims of “Digital India.”

Third, GCAS appears designed to benefit private colleges and universities. The system applies mainly to government and grant-in-aid colleges and universities where education is relatively affordable. However, the admission process has been made so complicated, time-consuming and expensive that students and parents become frustrated and fear losing an academic year. As a result, they feel compelled to seek immediate admission in private colleges and universities despite much higher fees. This creates the impression that GCAS has been introduced deliberately to encourage privatization. Consequently, private institutions fill their seats while government colleges and universities are left with vacancies.

Fourth, GCAS was imposed without consultation. No discussions were held with student unions, teachers’ associations, principals’ associations, vice-chancellors or parents before the system was introduced. None of these groups had demanded such a system. The entire arrangement has been imposed unilaterally by the Education Department of the Gujarat government, making it an authoritarian step.

Fifth, the system is being implemented without proper legal backing. Under Section 5(16) of the Gujarat Public Universities Act 2023, universities are empowered to supervise, control and regulate admissions to various courses in university departments, affiliated colleges and recognized institutions. However, the Act does not mandate a single centralized admission system for the entire state. Admission regulation is meant to be a university function, but the Education Department has effectively taken complete control over it.

Students and parents also face endless technical problems under GCAS. Over the last two years, students had to complete “quick registration” even before Class 12 results were announced. If a student failed or later decided not to pursue college education, the Rs 300 fee was lost. The process itself has three stages: quick registration, logging in through a generated username and password, and then filling out the detailed form. In many cases, usernames and passwords are not generated properly, or OTPs arrive very late, by which time deadlines have passed. Students without personal mobile phones become dependent on cyber cafés because usernames and passwords are often linked to the mobile number or email used during registration.

After login, students face further difficulties while uploading photographs, signatures and other documents in specific JPG sizes. OTPs required for form confirmation are frequently delayed. Even after receiving an offer letter from GCAS, students must visit colleges physically to pay fees and complete the admission process. Another OTP is required at the college stage, and delays there also waste considerable time.

Students are also forced to indicate college preferences in advance. If they later wish to change colleges, the entire process has to be repeated through multiple admission rounds. This is especially difficult when the colleges are located in different cities or towns. The GCAS website crashes frequently, and even after usernames and passwords are generated, login problems related to passwords or captchas continue to occur repeatedly. Technical support through the helpline is ineffective, with callers often being told merely to change their browser, which rarely resolves the issue.

Even after completing the exhausting online process, students still have to purchase admission forms from colleges separately, pay fees, produce original documents and complete physical verification procedures. In reality, there is no genuine “online admission system”; instead, costs, delays and inconvenience for students and parents have increased significantly.

In view of all these issues, the GCAS system should be completely withdrawn and the earlier admission process conducted directly by colleges should be restored.