An aggressive outreach programme helped the varisty improve its enrollment to language courses
The School of Languages at Gujarat University has reasons to rejoice. Three of its departments witnessed a commendable increase in the number of students, as against the previous years. Until recently, it was on the verge of shrinking due to decreasing number of students. University officials credit their aggressive student outreach measures for admissions for the same.
Its Hindi Department — which had 13 and 7 students in 2015 and 2016, respectively — had 30 students enrolling in 2017. For Sanskrit, the number has increased from 13 in 2016 to 35 in 2017. A similar trend has been noticed for Gujarati, which saw 52 admissions in 2017 against 41 in 2016. However, the situation of Persian, Urdu, and Prakrit remains a concern.
Speaking about the same, professor Ranjana Argade, Director, School of Languages, said: “Two of our professors reached out to village students during their visits. Professor Bhanu Chaudhrai of the Hindi Department not only encouraged students to join the department, but also got some of them stay at her house. Spreading awareness on job opportunities has made people more hopeful towards taking uo language courses; they were apprised of job opportunities as translators, with city being declared a heritage city. Even professor Atul Unagar and Hetal Pandya took extra care to convince students.”
On the dismal condition of Urdu and Persian, professor Argade said: “FD Arts Girls College has a post graduate course in these; so, many prefer sending their daughters there instead of GU. For them, location matters.”
“For parents living in my area, they are not comfortable sending their children to far off places. Hence, I assured them of a hostel facility, which I believe is a big reason for the increased enrollment,” said professor Chaudhari, from Navsari in south Gujarat. The university also recruited professors in Sanskrit and English, recently.
A year ago, the university was considering shifting some faculty posts to other departments, owing to the decreasing number of students in the five departments. MN Patel, the former vice chancellor, had told DNA: “Some of the departments of GU are in ruins, it’s disheartening. This is the main reason we are planning to propose a tally of the number of students in each department against the number of faculty. For example, there are three professors in Hindi for 12 students, so we can easily shift one position to other departments in need.”
CRISIS AVERTED
- Gujarat University officials credit their aggressive student outreach measures for admissions for the increase in number of students
- A year ago, the university was considering shifting some faculty posts to other departments
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