Magadh Mahila College

Regular students can expect more teachers soon, but those undertaking vocational courses have to make do with visiting faculty, both inexperienced and irregular.

The state government last week, after over a decade, advertised teaching vacancies in Bihar universities. But the vacancies the Bihar Public Service Commission would fill up pertain to regular course subjects and not self-financing and vocational courses.

At Patna University alone, there are more than 60 vocational courses running from different colleges or under various departments. Most of these self-financing courses are either three-year degree courses, two-year postgraduate courses or one-year diploma courses.

Going by student strength in the colleges, vocational courses have more students than regular ones.

The PU postgraduate departments alone run nine courses, among them two-year postgraduate degree courses. There are also around 15 diploma courses.

Prabhakar Jha, head, PMIR (personnel management & industrial relations) department, said: “The teacher recruitment, which is being carried out after a decade, is not going to help vocational course students as there would be no appointment of teachers in vocational courses. Those students would have to keep on depending on guest faculty for their classes.”

The PMIR department runs two vocational courses — two-year MA in rural studies and one-year postgraduate diploma in industrial safety and management at Darbhanga House.

Apart from these two, the history department runs two courses — two-year postgraduate in women’s studies and one-year postgraduate diploma in women’s studies.

The commerce department too runs a two-year MBA course, while its Hindi department runs two-year postgraduate course in mass communication and journalism apart from one-year diploma in mass communication.

The colleges of Patna University, too, run several vocational courses.

Magadh Mahila College runs eight vocational courses. There are four courses of three year duration, two courses of one year duration (postgraduate diploma course) and a two-year postgraduate degree course.

Though the fee structure for these vocational courses is higher than that for regular courses, students are attracted towards vocational courses, as most of them are job-oriented.

A student of rural studies said: “The two-year rural studies course is one of the most popular courses at Patna University. However, the department still has to depend upon guest faculty for teaching. They are neither experienced nor regular.”

Last week, the BPSC published an advertisement for filling up 3,364 posts in the rank of assistant professors, university-wise and subject-wise.

Magadh University, the largest university in the state, advertised 639 vacant posts, while PU sought 155 assistant professors.