Scottish Church College

Scottish Church College in north Calcutta plans to introduce commerce for its girl students from the 2014-15 academic session.

The new stream will be exclusively for girls, though the institution offers all its existing courses to both sexes.

Set up in 1830 and run by the Church of North India, the institution said the need for commerce has been felt in recent years.

“With commerce emerging as a sought-after course among a large section of students, we have decided to introduce a new stream in commerce,” said John Abraham, the college rector.

“At present, we can accommodate only girls because of the paucity of space. We will offer it to boys later,” the rector added.

The college will start the stream with 50 seats and increase the number gradually so that boys can also apply for admission.

The college will run the new course in the morning shift.

At the undergraduate level, the college offers courses in arts (BA), science (BSc), business administration (BBA) and education (BEd).

“A commerce degree with specialisation in accounting would at the most land a job in the banking sector until a few years ago. All these years, we had not focused on commerce education because of its limited options. But the situation is gradually changing and a commerce graduate now has a wide range of options,” said a teacher of the college.

A former head of Calcutta University’s commerce department said the trend of campus placements is also “widely” spreading to commerce colleges, which is driving many students to pursue the course.

Many companies prefer to hire fresh graduates because they can be groomed according to their requirement. Commerce graduates can get jobs in accounting, auditing, banking and finance sectors.

“We intend to hire highly qualified teachers to teach in the commerce section because our aim is to attract meritorious students,” said the rector.

The institution’s academic council has approved the proposal and the authorities will soon approach Calcutta University to seek its formal permission.

“We have a plan to introduce the course in the academic session starting July. But we will be in a position to confirm whether we will be able to start this year or not after we get the green light from the university,” said a source in the college.

After receiving an application from the college, the rule book says, the university will have to conduct an inspection of the campus to examine whether the institution has the adequate infrastructure, teachers, library and other facilities to run a new course.

The permission to launch the course will be given on the basis of recommendations from the inspection team.