Telangana varsities yet to decide on multidisciplinary courses

Hyderabad: The department-level Board of Studies (BoS) in the Telangana State universities are clueless about the introduction of multidisciplinary courses under the new National Education Policy-2020.

According to sources in the Osmania and Kakatiya universities, the department level BoS are yet to receive any circular from the varsity administration seeking their views on the issue.

Speaking to The Hans India, a professor from the Osmania University said, "There are several levels of approvals to be crossed for the introduction of new courses across the departments. Once the department receives communication from the university authorities, then, it will convene the BoS meeting which would discuss what kind of courses it can offer to the students from other departments." For example, a student from engineering may want to study economics. It is the BoS of that department that decides what kind of syllabus should be incorporated to offer a course to such students. Following this, there will be a faculty meeting to figure out the existing faculty who can teach the course.

It is then that the BoS will recommend to the Standing Committee for its approval before offering the course.

"Every department across the courses of sciences, engineering, arts, social sciences and languages will have to adhere to this exiting procedure," he added.

However, to date, there is no communication received to convene BoS to discuss the issue and to come up with the courses that they can offer, said another faculty member from the Kakatiya University.

However, the hitch is that when a department decides to offer a course to the students from other branches, then, it will also have to allocate the faculty members to teach the same for a semester. In turn, it might hamper the regular teaching schedules of the department. "This can be addressed only when there are sufficient number of faculty members to ensure that they handle both the regular courses as well as the cross departmental courses," he added.

That apart, there should also be a mechanism need to be put in place. To monitor that the credits earned by a student are properly transferred to their respective home departments.

It might take a couple of months to introduce such courses. However, it may create trouble unless the issues of a sufficient number of faculty members and the monitoring mechanism to oversee the credit transfers are not addressed ahead of introducing such courses in the State universities, said a Professor from the engineering department of Osmania University.

Glitches galore

• The departments concerned have to allocate faculty for the courses

• This might hamper regular teaching schedules of the department

• There is no mechanism in place to monitor transfer of credits earned by the student

• As a result, the process of offering multidisciplinary might take some more months