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As satellite centres come a cropper, Pbi varsity looks to boost admissions
80% seats in engineering and management courses are vacant in external centres
With external centres, primarily neighbouring campuses coming a cropper, Punjabi University has started formulating strategies to boost admissions in these institutions.
Punjabi University vice-chancellor (V-C) professor BS Ghuman convened a meeting of heads of different engineering and management departments of the university and all regional centres, neighbouring campuses and constituent colleges on Thursday to brainstorm strategy to improve admission rates in the upcoming academic session.
Addressing faculty members, the V-C said, “Ahead the next academic session, the university should work on formulating concrete policies and plans to increase admissions in departments. We need to take vital steps to ensure academic quality. We also need to adopt the improvised marketing methods to reach potential students.”
The V-C also reviewed the number of occupied and vacant seats in the institutions. “Institutes need to ensure optimum use of mainstream and social media to better the stance and ranking of the university. We will also adopt aggressive marketing strategies to attract more students,” he said, adding that in order to revive regional and neighbourhood campuses the institute, through admissions, the institute will look into focussing on students from Bihar, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.
“Though admissions are not an issue on the university campus, it is a major cause of concern in neighbouring and regional centres, especially in engineering and management streams,” Ghuman said.
The varsity has nine neighbourhood campuses and six regional centres located mainly in rural areas of the state. However, 80% of seats in engineering and management courses are vacant in these external centres.
Ghuman said the varsity has reason to pat its back this time as 366 engineering students were able to get jobs in different multinational companies bringing its recruitment rate to 100%.
“While analysing the reasons behind lack of admissions in engineering courses, we realised that our poor placement record was the main reason why engineering aspirants opted for private institutes over the university campus. We hope our improved placement results will incentivise more students to enrol,” Ghuman said.
