BHUBANESWAR: The Utkal University has this year suspended admissions to four of its self-financing courses owing to lukewarm response from students.
These are Master of Law in Human Rights, Master of Rural Development, Master Degree in Human Consciousness and Yogic Science and Master Degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management. While three courses had between 10 and 30 seats, Master of Rural Development was having a seat strength of 50.
Apparently, the Human Rights course, which was started in 2011 and taught by the PG Department of Law, was suspended because the department currently has just one faculty member. “It was not feasible on the part of the lone professor to teach the regular MA students and also cater to the self-financing one,” said an official.
The entire course spread over two years, had been divided into four semesters, and received partial funding from the University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi. The Master Degree in Human Consciousness and Yogic Science course had 16 seats and was run by Sanskrit Department.
Sources said the number of applications received for the course was abysmally low and department members found it impossible to run the course. Sources said there are just three faculty members in the Sanskrit Department and there is not enough space in the department to hold the classes. Similar is the case with Tourism and Hospitality Management course, which received less than 10 applications.
Faculty crisis was the reason behind suspension of the two-year Master of Rural Development course that functioned under Department of Sociology since 2005.
Decision to suspend these courses for a year was taken at the Syndicate meeting.
PG Council Chairman GK Panda, however, exuded confidence that these courses would be resumed next year after the faculty recruitment process is over. “The recruitment advertisement has already been published and once it is completed, we will add new innovative and job-oriented courses to our curriculum,” he said.
Including these four courses, Utkal University offered a total of 16 self-financing courses till last year. Apparently, Development Journalism and Electronic Communication, Tourism and Heritage Management and Human Consciousness and Yogic Science are three UGC innovative programmes.