Students of BJB Autonomous College exchange notes in their classroom in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar, June 30: Degree colleges in the city have received an overwhelming response for physical science courses with BJB Autonomous College emerging as the most preferred destination for aspirants.

The premier college has received 3,352 forms for 112 seats for the physical science stream or physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) combination, said Jahan Ara Begum, admission in-charge.

“In other words, there are nearly 30 students competing for one PCM seat,” she said.

The cut-off marks for PCM stands at 89.8 per cent as against 84.33 last year. BJB principal Niranjan Dhal said physical sciences had seen a resurgence because of the research and employment opportunities that it offered.

“The market for traditional subjects has improved. On the contrary, global recession has affected jobs in the technical sector. Therefore, several candidates securing high marks are now seeking admission to general streams instead of pursuing technical education, specially engineering,” he said.

The college authorities are now in a hurry to recruit guest faculty for the much sought-after physical science department, which is facing a staff crisis.

Until a few months ago, there was not a single teacher for the department and students were left at the mercy of a retired government teacher serving as guest lecturer and a contractual faculty member, an alumnus of the college.

Sources said two teachers of BJB Junior College had been deputed to the Plus Three physical science department to address the vacancy crisis. “At present, only two posts are lying vacant and we will conduct an interview between July 1 and 4 to hire guest faculty,” said Dhal.

Sources said the college authorities were also mulling increasing the remuneration for guest faculty, which is Rs 350 at present.

Other city-based colleges have also attracted a large number of applicants for the physical science courses. While Ramadevi Women’s Autonomous College has 1,635 applicants for 48 seats, College of Basic Sciences has received 1984 forms for 64 seats.

“If you analyse our application figures for PCM, we have 34 takers for one seat. So, we are more popular than BJB,” said a teacher of Ramadevi, on the condition of anonymity.