Few takers for Pbi varsity’s key courses

Gagan K Teja

Tribune News Service

Patiala, July 23

Two of Punjabi University most profitable courses — business management and engineering — have failed to attract applicants this year, following which the income of the university has further taken a dip.

The university authorities are finding it difficult to fill the seats available on the campus itself, forget about the neighbourhood and regional centres.

Only about half of the 720 seats of the University College of Engineering have been filled so far. Even though the admissions are on, the university authorities are unable to fill the seats following which they are planning to further reduce the cut-off especially for the Lateral Entry Engineering Test (LEET) i.e. direct admission into second year of engineering.

One of the senior functionaries requesting anonymity said that there would be an annual loss of Rs 1 lakh per seat. While the admission cut-off for LEET is 60 per cent and above, we are considering reducing it to 50 per cent to at least fill few more seats. Seats in all branches are vacant, except computer engineering.

Meanwhile, in Yadavindra College of Engineering, Damdama Sahib, the off-campus of Punjabi University, there are 240 seats against which only 21 students have sought admission.

Apart from more than 50 regular teachers in this college, there are about 44 contractual employees. This speaks volumes about the inappropriate teacher-student ratio.

The university, which is already running into losses amounting to crores, is paying monthly salary of about Rs 25 crore to its employees.

Similarly, only 390 students have cleared the entrance test for MBA seats in all its campuses, including 220 MBA seats on university campus and about 200 more seats in its different regional centres and constituent colleges.

The number of applications is only about one-third of last year.

Sources informed that while there is not even a single application for the Regional Centre for Information Technology and Management, Mohali, there is just one application in its Talwandi Sabo campus for MBA and two applications for BBA where there are a total of 220 management seats in this campus.

A senior faculty member has blamed it on poor placement and lack of hostel facilities in the university. He claimed that the university has failed to tie up with good institutions following which the students are seeking admissions in private institutions.

Students have blamed it on the teachers. They claim that very few teachers are taking classes regularly following which they have to cover the syllabus on their own. One can also read requests urging the teachers to come to the classes on the walls of University College of Engineering.

However, Dean Academics Dr Inderjeet Singh said there was an overall slump in the market following which the number of applications has gone down drastically. “We are analysing all the aspects and doing detailed introspection. We will be sending a proposal in this regard to the higher-ups soon to try and recover the losses,” he said.