With the increase in demand for Commerce over Science at the pre-university level, the Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE) is reorganising lecturers and deputing more commerce teachers in government PU colleges. What’s more, the department has decided to recruit more teachers for commerce subjects.
K.R. Manjunath, secretary of the Karnataka State Pre-University College Principals’ Association, said students were choosing Commerce, as PU colleges itself were offering foundation courses for CA and the Common Proficiency Test, considering the demand for them. “Moreover, engineering education has reached saturation point owing to decline in job opportunities, and medical education is becoming expensive. So, students are not opting for the Science stream right at the PU level,” he said.
C. Shikha, Director of the DPUE, said this was because immense job opportunities were available in the financial and banking sectors. “Even younger students are aware of the trends and are opting for Commerce as they are sure they want to pursue a career in this stream,” she said.
In fact, Commerce students in government PU colleges are in a fix as there are a large number of teacher vacancies in subjects such as Business Studies, Economics, and Political Science. Colleges are also grappling with shortage of English and Kannada teachers. In Business Studies, there are 559 posts that are vacant; 322 in Kannada; and 241 in Economics. The least number of teacher vacancies are in Arabic, Tamil, Telugu, and subjects such as Statistics and Logic — all of which have one vacant post each.
Of the total 12,000 sanctioned posts in 1,269 government PU colleges, as many as 2,605 posts have been lying vacant for several years now. To overcome this, colleges are recruiting guest lecturers on part-time basis. However, both students and faculty members complain that the quality of lecturers is not up to the mark.
Taking note of the vacant posts in the Commerce stream, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait said more teachers would be recruited for Commerce and Science. “We have been observing that there is a huge demand for Commerce courses as against Science over the past few years,” he said, adding that the department would analyse the demand at the college level and depute teachers to colleges based on the demand.
