Telangana may junk 1 lakh seats in UG courses

Hyderabad: Nearly one lakh seats in various UG courses in conventional Degree colleges will either be removed from online admissions process or the colleges will be allowed to make slight changes in subjects to facilitate student enrolments.

Courses in physical sciences, languages and literature, microbiology, biochemistry etc are having less takers at present. Nearly 2.75 to three lakh seats will be on offer in the first year, but more than one-third are going unfilled since these courses are not in demand.

There is an imminent requirement to update and upgrade the traditional courses to meet the ever-increasing demands of the market and to make students readily employable, said B.Suryanarayana Reddy, principal of Jagruthi Degree and PG College, Bhongir.

“Decades have passed since the inception of under-graduate and post- graduate courses in our universities. Unfortunately, we still follow the age-old methods of education. As a result, the emerging graduates are not equipped to meet the changing needs of the market. Under-graduate education in Telangana needs a major transformation,” he said.

Undergraduate courses should be restructured and the curriculum be finalised in ways as to ensure creative and innovative educational experience to the students, with hands-on experience in their respective areas, he stressed.

Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has instructed higher education officials to overhaul the existing courses to the needs of the industry.

B. Laxma Reddy and V. Sudershan Reddy who run degree colleges in the city stated that the de-mand is now for courses that have a combination of subjects like computer science or political scienc-e or statistics or even courses like B.Sc (Nutr-ition). We were told at the university level to submit representations whether to change a single subject or surrender the course on the whole so that it won’t be included in the admission process, they said.

However, college managements want officials to keep the less-in-demand courses in sleep mode so that they could be revived in case students later prefer them.

Meanwhile, TSCHE chairman N. Papi Reddy said the issue has not been discussed by the higher education department. “We will take up the issue after colleges approach us,” he said.

Project work soon in varsity syllabus
If the Collegiate Education department’s plans fructify, project wo-rk will make its way soon into the curriculum of conventional courses like BSc, BA, BCom, BBA etc.

Project work is already mandatory for professional courses like BTech, BPharm etc in their curriculum, but officials are keen on introducing this learning experience even to regular degree colleges.

The department started the plan by introducing the project work concept for thousands of students in 130 government degree colleges across the state.

According to senior official A. Vani Prasad, students will be benefitting from these project studies. “Project work is a learning experience which aims to provide students with an opportunity to synthesise knowledge from various areas of learning, and critically and creatively apply it to real-life situations. It enhances students’ knowledge and enables them acquire skills like collaboration, communication a-nd independent learning, and prepares them for lifelong learning and challenges ahead,” she stress-ed.

The department, she said, has taken this initiative in government degree colleges and would like to extend it to private colleges in the near future.

“We want to lead by example and hence the study projects concept was introduced in government colleges. This model would be shown to over 1,000 private colleges so that they could follow suit.”

Replying to a query, she said the department would explore possibilities of including Project Work under internals during the degree study.

Dr J. Neeraja, another official, said they want to make this initiative an an-nual affair before it makes its way into curriculum.