Mehboob Inamdar
Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: Certificate courses meant to enhance skills and open career doors at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (BAMU) are ironically getting lukewarm response from students.
It may be noted that the university offers undergraduate, postgraduate, diploma and certificates through different departments under the Faculty of Science and Technology, Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Inter-disciplinary and Faculty of Commerce and Management.
To bridge the gap between academic degrees and industry skills and provide trained human resources, short-term courses, including certificates, were launched in around 50 departments of the city campus. The State Government gives grants for postgraduate courses while the university will have to run undergraduate, diploma and certificate courses on a self-support basis. Most certificate courses under BAMU are struggling to fill seats, raising questions about student awareness, course relevance, and institutional outreach.
Since most of the courses are non-granted and self-supported, the fee is charged between Rs 250 and Rs 5,000. The duration of each course is from three months to one year. The courses and syllabus are good, but the respective department is unable to promote the courses.
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Causes for lukewarm response
According to sources, the certificate started to upskill youths and help them to be self-entrepreneurial.
“Many departments do not have sufficient staff and departments have to complete the syllabus on time. Moreover, there is not much publicity and promotion of the courses to draw the attention of the students,” the sources said.
They said that there were some of the aspirants who could not get admission to the courses because there is one of the main conditions, that is, a minimum 20 students should register to start the course.
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Efforts being taken to enhance admissions
Registrar Dr Prashant Amrurkar said that many courses are getting good responses from students.
He said that the administration is taking different initiatives to increase admissions in all the courses, including PG and certificate.
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Various departments of the university started different certificate and diploma courses in language, personality development, technology, agriculture and health.
The names of some of the certificate courses offered by the different departments are as follows;
Panchayat Raj, Organisation and Management of Self Help Groups, Elderly Care, Dehydration Technology of fruits And Vegetables, Stock Market, Beekeeping, Medical Tourism, Managerial Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Technology for Industrial Process, Mechatronics 4.0, Psychological Counselling, Organic Farming, Horticulture, Nursery Management and Plant Tissue Culture Technology.