Vacancies in PG courses force BU to hold counselling

The Bangalore University (BU) is paying a heavy price for granting affiliation to too many colleges, as seats in postgraduate courses in many of them have fallen vacant.

As a result, the affiliate colleges have asked BU to schedule another round of counselling to fill the vacant seats.

Speaking to DH, a senior varsity official said 40% of the PG seats have fallen vacant for the academic year 2018-19. “This’s due to granting affiliation to too many colleges,” he rued. “The status of the affiliate colleges is no different. Trifurcation of the varsity has also contributed to this.”

While the Master of Arts and Science courses account for much of the 40% vacancies, even the Master of Commerce that usually has high demand has reported vacancies. In effect, most of the masters streams have reported vacancies except for Master of Commerce. The much-acclaimed Performing Arts with dance, music and theatre arts along with Master of Science in Fashion and Apparel Design have seen admissions in single digits. BU Vice-Chancellor Venugopal KR said the varsity would hold another round of counseling by first week of September. “There could be various reasons for candidates not applying. This’s common every year,” he said.

He hoped that students looking for one last opportunity to seek admission to the PG courses would take advantage of the round of counseling. “We’ll conduct a study on courses having less demand and take a call on them in the next academic year,” Venugopal assured.

BU has notified another round of counseling on August 31 for the subjects in the commerce stream such as Financial Analysis, International Business, Management Studies, Tourism and Travel Management. On September 4, counselling will be held for MA, MSc and other subjects at Jnanabharathi campus.

“Those applied earlier need not re-apply for this round of counseling,” the VC said. “Candidates already applied will get preference against earlier notifications and those not attended counseling/not allotted seats.”