GUWAHATI: With the ongoing admission season in colleges, Arts degree courses remained the most popular among students seeking admission in Cotton University as the university saw the maximum number of applications this year to study Arts courses.
The university received a total of 2,507 applications for 470 seats in degree courses in Arts stream.
In terms of cut-offs too, Arts courses had the highest cut-off marks with Political Science registering a cut-off as high as 96.3%, while the History cut-off stood at 96%.
Further, the university received 2,335 applications for its BSc courses for a total number of 485 seats. With the high number of applications, the authorities informed that they had to increase the number of seats from 485 to 508.
According to academic registrar SK Dutta, the university has been witnessing more applications for Arts courses.
“We have seen a trend over the past five years that more numbers of applicants want to pursue Arts degree courses as compared to Science - which was the previously preferred choice,” informed Dutta.
Officials informed that the total seats include students from the extra-curricular activities and persons with disability quota.
Further, a few undergraduate degree courses in Arts saw very few applications in Cotton University. These included Bengali, Persian and Arabic.
Many takers for commerce stream
This year, KC Das Commerce College in Guwahati saw three times the number of applications for the BCom course with more than 1,800 applications. The college offers 600 seats in the BCom course.
The authorities informed that all 600 seats have been filled for BCom, which is also the most popular course in the college. The college followed the online application process for admissions this year.
Further, the college has a total of 300 seats in higher secondary which were also filled. The college had to then demand for more seats for the HS batch and finally took in 329 students, informed authorities.
Further, the admission process for BBA, BCA and PGDCA courses are yet to be completed in the college, said officials.
On the other hand, at the Guwahati Commerce College (GCC), the authorities received 934 applications in total against 300 seats for Higher Secondary course. The applications, however, saw a dip in GCC this year as compared to the last year with the college receiving around 1,300 applications as against 450 seats in 2018.
Additionally, this year GCC saw 2,200 applications against 615 seats in the degree course. The college authorities told G Plus that the cut-off remained at 75.5% for CBSE and SEBA boards.
Infrastructural developments the need of the hour
Many city colleges still lack proper infrastructure and face shortage of qualified teachers which prove to be a hurdle in providing quality education.
Sources at Guwahati Commerce College (GCC) informed that the college was forced to reduce the number of seats for its degree course from last year because of the non- availability of teachers and the widening of the teacher-student ratio.
Further, principal of KC Das Commerce College, Dr Hrishikesh Barua, informed G Plus that there’s a lot which the government can do.
“There is a paucity of space on campus which poses problems. We have also requested the government from time to time for allotment of space,” he said.
Further, Dr Barua added that the college is in immediate need of teachers. He further said that the college is soon going to start digital classrooms.
Additionally this year, courses of degree arts have had a high number of applications in B Borooah College too.
A senior official from B Borooah College told G Plus that the government needs to pay heed to infrastructural development in the college.
“There is a need to provide proper classrooms and electricity. We require additional space urgently because, with the introduction of the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS), more classrooms and space is required for new courses and subjects which would be offered to the students to choose from,” said the source.
The source added that the number of vacancies of professors is also very high.
“In the chemistry department there are only five teachers working in two shifts and we have only three teachers in the mathematics department - these are two major courses,” informed the official.
(With inputs from Antarixa Bhardwaj & Yukti Jain)