News & Updates

Delhi University has its share of “rare courses“ too. Some subjects -that aren't modern Indian or foreign languages are offered at undergraduate level in less than 10 colleges of the university. Some are very popular and some suffer due to less awareness or misinformation about them.

Payal Mago, principal, Shaheed Rajguru College of Applied Sciences, was asked about the instrument they teach in the interdisciplinary, applied science programme, BSc (Honours) in instrumentation, offered at just two DU colleges. “Even very highly-placed officials think we're teaching musical instruments,“ she said.

Biomedical sciences is offered at just three colleges; instrumentation and food technology at just two. But despite the few seats in off campus colleges and relatively less awareness, they get thousands of applicants. “Biomedical sciences had over 5,000 applications last year for the three colleges put together. Instrumentation had about 2,000-3,000,“ said Balaram Pani, Principal, Bharkaracharya College of Applied Sciences, which has 46 seats for each subject. Response to food technology is similarly good. “Students who take instrumentation can master in electronics, instrumentation and biomedical sciences. They are recruited too by a number of industries,“ said Mago, adding, “Our seats never go empty .“

Geography would have seen some expansion if colleges had been allowed to launch courses this year. Right now, it's available at nine colleges, including just two in DU's North Campus. Sociology is available at seven; only two of these, Hindu and Sri Venkateswara, are co-educational. Biochemistry is taught at five colleges -at only one in North Campus -and Hindi patrakarita (journalism), at four. Indraprastha College for Women is the only one that runs an honours programme on multimedia and mass communication (in self financed mode), and Sri Venkateswara College, to run an honours programme on biological sciences. The honours programmes in modern Indian language courses offered by less than five colleges are Arabic, Bengali, Persian, Punjabi and Urdu.

(ToI)