Utkal University. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, July 22: As colleges go through the exercise of sorting out this year’s application forms, they are just as nervous as the applicants. For, admissions are not just about colleges trying to figure out how many students to accept but also about how many students would accept them.

At Utkal University here, the authorities are concerned about the poor response to some of the self-financing courses running under it. Of the 16 sponsored courses, yoga education, remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) and fisheries and aquaculture are yet to find favour with the students.

There are two kinds of yoga education courses — postgraduate diploma in yoga science and master’s degree in yoga science – with 16 seats in each. These are run by the Sanskrit department. However, while the diploma course has attracted 33 applications, the master’s course has received only 11 forms.

“Since career opportunities are very limited in the field of yoga, less number of aspirants show interest. Those who take admissions do so just for the sake of an extra degree,” said Nihar Satpathy, who is pursuing a diploma in yoga at Utkal.

Head of the Sanskrit department Radhamadhab Dash said some seats in yoga remain vacant at the master’s level every year since the aspirants fail to meet the eligibility criteria. “The minimum qualification required for taking admission into a master’s degree is a post graduation diploma degree in yoga. But students who complete their diploma studies hardly show any interest to go for a master’s degree,” he said.

Another sponsored course, a PG diploma in remote sensing and GIS, being run by the geography department has found few takers. This year, only 29 forms have been received against the total 20 available seats. Although the course has been running for about a decade now and has great employability potential, it has failed to grab the attention of students. Kabir Mohan Sethy, head of geography department, said awareness among students in this regard is lacking. “Being a government-run institution, we cannot publicise the course through marketing,” he added.

Similarly, the not-so-popular masters in fisheries and aquaculture, which is run by the zoology department, has received only 51 forms for a total of 12 seats – four forms more than it received last year.

Further, two unconventional courses such as PG diploma in early childhood education (under the psychology department) and PG diploma in Chinese studies (under the political science department) had to be closed down four years ago as they failed to attract sufficient number of applicants.

According to Brahmanand Satpathy, dean of students’ welfare at Utkal University, the lack of a Chinese language teacher and minimum required candidates forced them to close down the Chinese studies course nearly five years ago. A year after this, similar problems forced the PG diploma in early childhood education course to be discontinued, said P.K. Rath, head of psychology department.

However, the website of Utkal University (www.utkal-university.org) still displays these two courses in the list of self-financing courses. Contacted, the chairman of PG Council, P.K. Sarkar, said he was unaware that the website has not been updated. “The courses are no longer being offered by the university and therefore, have not been mentioned in the university prospectus. We would update the website soon,” Sarkar said.