Raqeeb BhAtt
Srinagar, Feb 04, KDC: The Cluster University Srinagar (CUS) in recent admission notification has announced separate intake capacity under integrated PG & 3 year honors programmes to 16 subjects.
The seat matrix for the programmes will effectively now be 80 per subject (except for Journalism and Mass Communication-40) 40 for 3-year honors degree and 40 for 5-year integrated PG degree.
Insiders from the University told News Agency Kashmir Dot Com- (KDC) that formal documents in this regard are yet to be framed but the university has come up with the notification inviting applications for entrance tests to these courses.
Students who are currently pursuing courses at the university have remained in a state of distress due to lack of quality lab equipment and subject specific faculty.
According to sources, the department of Journalism and Mass Communication has a total faculty of three teachers, two permanent and one employed on contract basis.
The university was established in 2016 by pooling up five colleges of the Srinagar city and is offering programmes through these categorised schools.
With moving up the seat matrix it will require more and trained, well qualified faculty and sophisticated enough labs to improve practical experience of the students.
Although offering these programmes have created opportunity for the students of valley to prosper in a specific subject of their interest at an early stage of their career, are they being enough quality driven education or not.
Wishing anonymity, a student from Women’s College Srinagar (collegiate college of CUS) told KDC that they have completed two years of their honors course and they haven’t had a single practical class in these two years, there is a complete lack of lab equipment.
By introducing integrated courses in Journalism from this year, this means they will have to introduce a separate PG programme in future also and for that recruitment of more faculty should be there otherwise how can a faculty of three teachers deal with four batches (three honors and one PG) remains the question.
Another student from SP college said that our department can’t accommodate a group of 40 students for the lab and classwork, how can they accommodate 80 students in a batch now.
Subsequently a college/university has to hold 3 batches synchronously a year, it will be pretty much messy for the students to imbibe quality education, he added.
Despite repeated attempts from the reporter there was no official available from the University for the comments over the issue.
Meanwhile, no one is holding the post of vice chancellor in the university from past one year and the post continues to remain vacant. (KDC)
