E-Paper
Classical language courses struggle to find takers in universities of Bihar
Even as the admission process for undergraduate courses in state varsities is drawing to a close, there are few takers for classical language courses while there is heavy rush for popular conventional and vocational courses.
Even as the admission process for undergraduate courses in state varsities is drawing to a close, there are few takers for classical language courses while there is heavy rush for popular conventional and vocational courses.
At Patna University (PU), only two students have taken admission in Sanskrit department against 40 sanctioned seats in three constituent colleges while all seats allotted to Arabic (10), Persian (15), Bengali (10) and Maithili (25) language are lying vacant this year.
Even Hindi has managed to fill only 47% of sanctioned seats while 90% seats are lying vacant in Urdu department.
Similar trend could be seen at Patliputra University (PPU), which concluded admission process for undergraduate courses on Friday.
PPU has allotted 461 seats to Sanskrit in Patna-based constituent colleges, of which 402 seats are still vacant.
Of 71 Maithili seats, 61seats are vacant. More than 90% of seats allotted to Bengali, Bhojpuri, Magahi and Persian are lying vacant.
When contacted, Sadique Hussain, head of Persian postgraduate department at PU, said, “Students don’t get much opportunity at school level for learning classical languages and thus they lose interest gradually. Besides, in recent years, modification has been done in educational policies which restricts those opting Urdu from switching to Persian after matric.”
“Classical language courses have great potential for jobs in tourism and translation field. We have pinned hope on the new National Education Policy (NEP) which has given much importance to classical languages. Implementation of NEP is likely to revive classical languages right from school level,” he said.
Meanwhile, a PU official said, “We have published seventh merit list for admission in BA courses. We received 10,608 applications for BSc, which was the highest among all courses, followed by BCom for which more than 4,000 students applied this year.”
Patna University
Sanskrit
Total seats:40
Seat vacant: 38
Arabic
Total seats:10
Seat vacant: 10
Maithili
Total seats:25
Seat vacant: 25
Bengali
Total seats: 10
Seat vacant: 10
Persian
Total seats:15
Seat vacant: 15
Hindi
Total seats:85
Seat vacant:39
Urdu
Total seats:40
Vacant seats:36
Patliputra University (Patna region)
Sanskrit
Total seats:461
Vacant seats:402
Maithali
Total seats:71
Vacant seats:61
Bengali
Total seats:37
Vacant seats:31
Bhojpuri
Total seats:9
Vacant seats:8
Magahi
Total seats:9
Vacant seats:8
Persian
Total seats:14
Vacant seats:13
Pali
Total seats:62
Vacant seats:37
