SAMBALPUR: Failing to get the desired response from students and affiliation problems, Sambalpur University (SU) has discontinued as many as six self-financing post-graduate (PG) courses in the academic session 2020-21. The courses are MBA in Rural Management, MBA in Agri Business, MBA in Financial Management, Nano technology, Medical Physics and Sanskrit.
While Medical Physics was discontinued due to affiliation issues, other courses were dropped due to fewer applicants (zero in some subjects). Last year, SU had discontinued the diploma course in Sambalpuri Studies after failing to get students for three consecutive academic sessions. Each of the self-financing courses had capacity between 20 and 40 seats.
The department of Business Administration had written to the university authority last year for discontinuation of the Rural Management course after failing to run it for seven consecutive batches.
Similarly, while reviewing other courses, SU authorities decided to discontinue other courses which could not fetch enough number of student enrolment in last two or more academic sessions.
A member of the academic council said, at least 10 students are needed to run these courses. “A lot of investment goes into developing the syllabus, arranging guest faculties and other infrastructure. It is therefore not feasible to run these courses with such a low student strength,” he said. PG Council chairman AK Das Mohapatra said, “We still have the provision to resume the courses, if demand grows in coming years.”
WESCO staff warn of stir over privatisation
Sambalpur: The Western Odisha Bidyut Shramik Karmachari Engineers’ Ekata Manch has threatened to launch a stir protesting privatisation of WESCO. Addressing mediapersons on Wednesday, members of the outfit, a platform of various employees’ associations of WESCO, said they would stage dharna in front of the discom offices across western Odisha on December 16 if the government did not roll back its decision to sell the utility to Tata Power within seven days. Besides, the body would stage protest for an hour every day in front of WESCO offices across the region from December 17.