It's a no-show for most of the language courses at Delhi University
It's a no-show for most of the language courses at Delhi UniversityLast date for buying common admission forms for Delhi University is nearing but there are some Indian language courses for which DU could hardly manage to get a student. For instance, BA (Hons.) Bengali, which is run by Miranda College and has eight seats has received such a poor response that the administration has decided to write to the DU authorities, asking them to merge the courses with mainstream courses. Says Pratibha Jolly, principal of Miranda House, " Inspite of good faculty members, we're not even able to fill 8 seats. We have collected data for the last three years, on the basis of which we will request the DU administration to do something to promote the course. We are also planning to create some add-on courses in languages, which can be done along with the mainstream course." Even courses in Urdu and Persia are meeting the same fate.
What goes wrong? Academicians feel that there are less employment opportunities for students of modern Indian languages. Mazhar Ahmad, a reader of Urdu at Zakir Husain College (evening) said, "When there are so many other courses with better career potential, why would somebody opt for language courses?" DU also runs courses for other languages such as Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Oriya, Kannada, Assamese, Gujarati and Sindhi. A varsity official remarks, "These courses should either be merged with the mainstream courses or the seats should be shifted to other courses, where students struggle to get admission into. Secondly, language courses except Hindi and English should also be given due importance. "
The last laughHowever, foreign languages especially French and German are popular since several international scholarships are available for further specialisation in these languages. The department of German and Roman studies has already sold more than a thousand forms for its four undergraduate language courses - BA (honours) in French, German, Italian and Spanish. "There has been a huge rush of applicants this year. The forms are available till June 11. So, we expect to get at least 3,000 applications this time," said Vibha Maurya, head of department.
These courses have opened up a plethora of opportunitiesu00a0 because of the growing presence of MNCs. As per the department, students graduating in French, German and even Italian and Spanish have been offered salary packages as high Rs 3 to 5 lakh per annum. Though the department does not have a placement cell, teachers say they often receive mails from companies willing to recruit students. But getting admission is not so easy as the department has just 39 seats in each language. Anyone with at least 45 per cent aggregate in class 12th (any stream) is eligible for the entrance exam scheduled to be on June 17. No prior knowledge of any of these languages is required to study this course. For final selection of students, 70 per cent weightage will be given to class XII marks and 30 per cent to the entrance test.u00a0
