Osmania University To Close Language Courses Due To Poor Demand

Hyderabad: The administration of Osmania University has decided to close some courses which received low response for admissions this year. Only a few people applied for the post-graduate and PG diploma courses in Marathi, Kannada, Persian, applied linguistics, functional Hindi and translation.

Due to very few applicants received for the courses, the university had already stopped conducting the entrance exam. For the six courses only 53 candidates have enrolled this year all over. "These are rare courses and it is difficult to find eligible candidates such as a graduate in Marathi or Kannada. Even for Urdu we have fewer students as most of the eligible candidates prefer other universities to continue Urdu language studies," OU Registrar Gopal Reddy said.

"Along with the students, there is also a staff crunch in the departments dealing with these subjects. For Persian we have one teacher and three for applied linguistics. We are struggling to run courses like geophysics and geochemistry which have a lot of demand due to staff crunch," Professor Battu Satyanaryana of the Osmania University Teachers' Association said.

"When teachers are not available for a few subjects there is no chance of re-deployment as there are no teachers to deploy. For Urdu department we have only three permanent teachers and only around 15 students are enrolled for the course," he added.

Only 11 students have enrolled for Kannada, two for Marathi and 18 for Persian and for PG diploma courses, there are seven students in applied linguists, 14 in functional Hindi and translation and one in Urdu paleography.