Pooled Campus Classes to limit hiring of lecturers

Hyderabad: Scores of students in the twin cities pursuing various postgraduate courses are now in a piquant situation of having to shuttle between colleges to attend classes. It is not that they had not joined any college.

But, the managements of the colleges for which they opted and took admission at the time of counseling have been subsequently running their colleges on the Pooled Campus Classes (PCC) model, which is one of its kind.

According to sources, as part of the PCC model, a student who had taken admission in a postgraduate course will have to attend to his or her class, one day at Chikkadapally, and the next day at Ramanthapur and on some other day, at Moosarambagh. This new scheme has been going on for quite some time, the sources added.

The PCCs are mainly run by educational societies or groups having several colleges running in different parts of the twin cities. For example, one of the prominent groups of educational institutions in the city has branches at RTC X Roads, Narayanaguda, Ramanthapur, Uppal and other places. However, the number of students who took admission in a couple of its branches are about 15.

It was for this reason that the colleges have been finding that it is too expensive to hire lecturer to every subject taught as part of the courses offered by a specific college within its group. It was against this backdrop that the colleges devised the new scheme. Accordingly, they are pooling students from different colleges functioning within its group and conducting combined classes.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior faculty member of a private group of colleges from Narayanaguda said, "A student who had chosen a specific college and took admission in it is not in a position to know where he will have to attend classes in a particular subject." At the end of the day, the students themselves are not in a position to identify and know which college they belong to, he said.

The PCCs are not only limited to the colleges offering conventional postgraduate courses. For example, two engineering colleges that have been associated with a Post-Graduate College located in Ameerpet run combine classes for professional courses like MCA and others. Similar is the fate of students studying in a PG college located in Ramanthapur conducting PCCs along with another engineering college located in Ghatkesar.

By V R C Phaniharan