Hyderabad: There are very few candidates who take up postgraduate and PG diploma courses in various languages like Kannada, Marathi, Persian, applied linguistics, functional Hindi and translation offered by the Osmania University.
The number of applicants is as less as 53 enrolled this year where the students didn’t even have to write entrance test to get admitted. The officials state the reason as very few candidates meet the eligibility criteria and also not all candidates are aware of these courses.
Gopal Reddy OU registrar said, “These are rare courses and it is difficult to find eligible candidates such as a graduate in Marathi or Kannada. Even for Urdu, we have fewer students as most of the eligible candidates prefer other universities to continue Urdu language studies.”
Talking about the classes he said classes continue irrespective of the number of students enrolled and that Telugu studies have a lot of demand with 4,190 candidates registered for the course out of which 3,393 appeared for the exam and 3,384 qualified.
He added, “Depending on the enrollment and eligibility, admissions will be given to candidates and rest of the seats will be vacant.”
OU Directorate of Admissions Professor D. Ashok said, “It was the same last year as well as less than 20 candidates enrolled for the rare courses; we did not conduct the entrance test in 2016 as well.”
Speaking about these courses and faculty Prof. Battu Satyanaryana of the Osmania University Teachers’ Association says “Along with few takers, there is also a staff crunch in the departments dealing with these subjects. For Persian, we have one teacher and three for applied linguistics. We are struggling to run courses like geophysics and geochemistry which have a lot of demand due to staff crunch.”
The university struggles to preserve the culture of certain departments and languages says the Professor.
He added, “When teachers are not available for a few subjects there is no chance of re-deployment as there are no teachers to deploy. For Urdu department, we have only three permanent teachers and only around 15 students are enrolled for the course”.
Currently, only 11 students have enrolled for Kannada, two for Marathi and 18 for Persian in the postgraduate category whereas for the PG diploma courses, 7 students enrolled for applied linguists, 14 for functional Hindu and translation and one in Urdu palaeography, sorces reported.