Ranchi, June 12: Students pursuing graduation are fast losing interest in subjects like Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Bengali and philosophy.

History, political science, geography and economics are popular picks this admission season. For around 150 seats, as many as 2,000-3,000 forms have been sold for each of the subjects while language studies struggle with not more than 250 to 400 takers.

Only the English honours course is an exception, college authorities point out.

In science, while botany and chemistry have the maximum takers, several seats for mathematics and physics remain vacant.

Javed Ahmed, the principal of Marwari College, said all the 150 seats for arts courses are filled, with applications crossing the 2,000-mark. But there are few interested in pursuing the language courses. The seats get barely filled,” the principal said.Ahmed added, earlier few students opted for psychology honours. “But this has undergone a change and all the 150 seats have been filled in recent years. Opportunities in the field have increased,” he said.

English is the only subject in this stream that gets due weightage. “Mainly girls opt for it. We have 60 seats for the course and and 45 get filled every year. But in other language courses like Bengali and Sanskrit, not even half the seats are filled. Many students drop the course in the middle of the year,” the principal said. College authorities have written to Ranchi University officials requesting that seats for language courses be reduced. “But we failed to get any response from them. We have limited the number of seats from 60 to 40 in our college, as there are hardly 20 students who opt for the course. We have the least number of students studying philosophy and here the intake ranges between 15 and 20. But we have a demand for Hindi and English courses and most graduates want to become teachers at the end of the course,” the principal said.

N. Sinha, the department head (PG) at Ranchi University, said among humanity subjects, English is most popular among students due to globalisation. “Competition in the job market has made it necessary that students know the language well,” Sinha added.

He pointed out that around 80 per cent of the seats gets filled for English honours course in in all the colleges.

Meenakshi Bhagat, a third-year history student of St Xavier’s College, believes history is one of the best subjects to study at the graduation level. “There are several things one can opt for after studying history. One can even sit for the Union Public Service Commission examinations after graduation. Knowing the subject from before would make the preparation very easy,” she said.

Anita Singh, a third year political science student of Nirmala College said, demand for English is quite high while subjects like history, political science and geography are also competitive.