GUWAHATI: Lalit Chandra Bharali College students studying in Bachelors of Business Administration (BBA) course are upset with the college authorities as only after a week of the commencement of their classes the course was abruptly discontinued. The courses in the college are accredited by Gauhati University. The admission fee of the BBA course was Rs 11,000.
Swayam Pradhan a resident of Tezpur moved to Guwahati in hopes of pursuing the newly introduced BBA course in Lalit Chandra Bharali College. Talking to G Plus he said, “I got an admission on July 30, 2022 and our first class was conducted in August 8. I was very excited to pursue a course I really liked but within a week our principal discontinued the course citing lack of students.”
The parents of Swayam spent a lot of money to find him a place to stay in Maligaon area, near the college. “I purchased uniform, books, I thought I would study here for the next three years and planned my finances accordingly. But now my life is filled with uncertainty,” Pradhan added. According to Pradhan, the principal tried to convince the students to either move to the Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) course in Lalit Chandra Bharali College itself or pursue their BBA under Pragjyotish College.
“Both these options aren’t practical. Why will we study computers if we wanted to study business administration in the first place? How are computers and business studies even related?” questioned another student in the BBA course of Lalit Chandra Bharali College who preferred to stay anonymous.
Himashree Sarma, another student who moved to Guwahati from Rangapara said, “Actually there were 10 students in the course, out of which 2 decided to pursue BCA and contacted the principal in regard to that, which made our principal think that the number of students were too low and he told us that it will be difficult to pay salaries to our teachers and so he requested us to consider shifting to another course or shift to Pragjyotish College. Our principal promised us a refund too, if we want to seek out other options but it’s too late. All the other colleges won’t accept new admissions, we are in real trouble.”
When G Plus talked to Amarendra Kalita, the acting principal of Lalit Chandra Bharali College, he clarified that the BBA was a self-financing course. He said, “Since there were 10 students, we didn’t have enough resources to hire quality teachers for the course which would have affected the students in the long term.” Kalita also added that he is concerned about the future of his students hence he has decided to discontinue the course.”
“BBA is seeing a trend of downfall as less students apply to opt the course. In Pragjyotish College this term’s batch dropped to 30 students from 47 students in the last batch. The BBA course is struggling in every college except Gauhati Commerce College (GCC), if the course gets discontinued next year, these students will suffer a lot,” Kalita explained. He added that he has already resolved the issue of students regarding course selection and prospective admissions.
“5 of the 10 students have decided to stay in our college, they have been transferred to BCA and in courses of our Humanities Department. 3 of the students opted to pursue BBA itself but from Pragjyotish College. While I referred the remaining two students to join K.C Das Commerce College and Pandu College respectively,” said Kalita.
While the authorities have referred the students to other colleges, it needs to be mentioned that the admission process of most of the colleges are almost complete and the students fear their admission in those colleges. Many private colleges in the city keep announcing new courses and when they do not get enough students, the courses are discontinued. The students suffer.