Can short-staffed colleges deliver on CBCS?

HYDERABAD: With the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H) all set to implement the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) for all affiliated colleges from this academic year, the big question that arises now is whether private colleges will be able to successfully implement the new system.

While parents and students are happy that they can choose from a wide variety of subjects, principals of autonomous colleges  say that the colleges need to put in that extra effort and make some fresh recruitments for it to work out.

“This is a welcome change. Instead of studying what the college wants me to study, now I will have the option to choose subjects I like and will have scope to gain knowledge from various departments,” G Karthik, an aspiring engineer, says.

Giving a tip or two to affiliated colleges on implementing CBCS, A Govardhan, principal of JNTU-H College of Engineering, which has been implementing CBCS since the last academic year, says, “In order to implement CBCS, colleges will have to bear some extra burden. A lot of coordination is needed between various departments as students are free to choose subjects from whatever field they are interested in. They need to appoint an academic counsellor who can counsel students so that they take right subjects.”

“Faculty will be crucial here. There might be a greater demand for one subject and less for another. Colleges should recruit the faculty accordingly. They should be more flexible as there is no fixed and formal curriculum. If a systematic approach is followed, definitely, we can see some result.” 

“In the second semester of final-year  engineering course, we had the option to choose electives. However, the college decided what we had to study as per the faculty available. The same happened with many of my friends in other colleges. I think that even in the case of CBCS, private colleges will do the same and the choice will just be on paper,” opines V Sai Sireesha, an engineer. 

It is worth noting that most of the private colleges in the state have faculty shortage and a few of them are not even able to produce 50 per cent of faculty members when the fact-finding panel of JNTU-H visited the colleges.

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