UoH sees decline in no. of applications this year

Hyderabad: The most prominent central university in the city, the University of Hyderabad, which has been recording 10 to 20 per cent increase in applications every year, has for the first time seen a marginal decline in the number of applications received this year.

While the university authorities attributed the marginal dip to the discontinuation of nine courses (mostly research courses) due to insufficient faculty strength, students were of the view that it was due to the unrest on campus following the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula.

Till this year, the number of applications had been increasing by 2,000 to 4,000 each year. "We were all very worried about the admissions this year, but there has not been a drastic impact of the stir. It could be that the impact was not huge because we are rated as one of the best universities in the country by the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) as well as other organizations. We have been ranked 4th after Indian Institute of Science (IISC) Bangalore, Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) Mumbai and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Delhi," said Vipin Srivastava, spokesperson and pro vice chancellor of UOH.

The university, meanwhile, has wound up courses like PG diploma in computational linguistics for Sanskrit, PG diploma in health communication, MTech minerals exploration, MPhil Telugu, MPhil applied linguistics, MPhil translation studies, PHD in science, technology and social structure, PHD in ACRHEM (Advanced centre for research in high energy material) and PHD general studies.

The winding up of these courses has been cited as one of the reasons for the reversal of growth in applications. The courses have been stopped due to reduced faculty strength. Currently, the university has 405 faculty members against a sanctioned strength of 556.

Some, however, believe that the dent in the university's appeal due to the students' movement has been huge.

"Apart from the fact that there is a decline, the fact that the 20 per cent growth rate is not there means a negative growth of 20 per cent this year. The impact is huge, otherwise this year 48,000 applications would have come in," said a faculty member from the SC and ST faculty forum of the university.

"The fact that this year applications have not increased drastically like the previous years shows the extent of the impact of the unrest on campus. Otherwise, there should have been an increase of 3,000-4000 applications this year too," said Prof. V Krishna, former controller of examinations.