No takers for computer study in UG courses

​Hyderabad: Senior officials in the Directorate of Collegiate Education (DCE) and the Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) have been at the receiving end following thousands of students from Humanities and Social Sciences at the undergraduate level rejecting its experiment of introducing computers in their course.

According to sources, the conventional courses like BA and B Com were restructured to offer something new and novel to students as part of the Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS). 

As part of the initiative, the officials have made elaborate exercise akin to the demand survey for various courses seeking data from principals of degree colleges across the State to know what courses that the parents and students in their area were demanding.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior official from the DCE said that nearly 300 government degree colleges across the State were asked to send their proposals on starting new courses. “But, the rider was such that they can propose to start new courses from the current academic year in their college, but they should do it without asking sanction of any funds and faculty for the same,” he added.

Adding, “The DCE circular made the principals clueless as to how a new course could be run in government colleges without funds and faculty. However, following the pressure mounted from the top, they introduced the computers course for Bachelor of Arts (BA) students,” he said.

For example, until the academic year 2017-18, students studied Economics, History, Politics, Public Administration as well as specialisation in Telugu, English and Urdu literature as the subjects in their BA course. 

Following the changes from the academic year 2018-19, students are asked to take computers instead of Economics, History and Politics etc as one of their subjects of study. Curiously, the restructured courses were being introduced exclusively in the government-run degree colleges, hoping there would be an good response from students to their new idea. The DCE pegged that there would be a 50 per cent increase in the government degree colleges as against around 29,000 students took admissions last year. 

Now, the DCE and TSCHE officials were left red-faced at the end of three phases of allocations under Degree Online Services Telangana (DOST)-2018 as there was a dismal response from students to their novel idea. Adding to it, hundreds of seats at the undergraduate level remained unfilled. When asked, sources in the TSCHE said there was still hope that students would respond positively which would be known only after the finalisation of the fourth and final phase of allocations.  However, officials are tightlipped when asked whether students studied computers at BA level were eligible to take admission into Master of Computer Applications (MCA) and similar courses. 

But, one official pointed out that there was no clarity on the issue as the stipulated eligibility criteria to take admission into MCA, M Sc (IT) and the like was that the students should have studied mathematics at 10+2 level. Or, they should have completed post-graduate diploma in computer applications to take lateral entry into the second year of MCA. 

What kind of opportunities that students would have in case of higher studies and jobs remained unclear. This has resulted in the new experiment drawing flak from the students.