Karnataka COMEDK entrance exam to be merged with CET from next year

Mangalore Today News Network / News18

Bengaluru, June 23, 2022: The COMEDK admission test will be combined with the Common Entrance Test (CET) and offered at the national level starting in 2019, the Karnataka government said on Wednesday.

 

Meanwhile, the seat-sharing will remain as it is now, and admission eligibility will be determined by students’ rankings in the combined CET. The next step, according to Higher Education Minister CN Ashwath Narayan, is to determine the specifics of how COMEDK and the CET would be combined. Minister Narayan said the modalities for merging COMED-K with CET will be worked out as the next course of action.

The higher education administration also restricted the fee increase in private engineering colleges to 10 per cent for the current academic year as opposed to the 25 per cent demanded by the colleges. In a meeting at Vikasa Soudha in Bengaluru, Narayan and officials of the Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges Association also decided not to charge any additional fees.

According to Narayan, the organisation initially requested a 25 per cent fee rise because “there had been no increase for the preceding two years, from 2020-21," but they eventually settled on a 10 per cent increase.

Students who were given government seats at private engineering institutes are subject to the tuition increase. The private college representatives assured the minister that they would support government action against colleges that collect any extra fee by any means.

While, the government’s Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) conducts CET for admissions to various undergraduate professional courses in the state, the Consortium of Medical Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMEDK) entrance exam are for admissions to undergraduate engineering courses at private engineering colleges in the state.