BENGALURU: Commerce has seen the highest number of takers at the pre-university level for sometime now, but city PU colleges are witnessing a steady demand for humanities as well over the last three years. Educationists say millennials are eager to take up creative rather than conventional jobs after graduation.
Mount Carmel College
has seen a steady increase in arts applications for admission to Class 11 in the last three years. “About 300 students from SSLC background have already applied for arts this year and we expect more applications to flow in. Last year too, we had 300 applications from SSLC passouts, 550 from CBSE and 300 from ICSE. The cutoff for arts has been kept at 80% and is competitive. Students with brilliant marks and big ambitions are choosing arts. The trend of higher admission in humanities has increased in the past three years in our college, with students realizing the relevance of arts in the current job market,” said principal Sister Ashwini.
Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain Independent PU College, VV Puram has received 1,470 applications for arts this year. BT Venkatesh, director of Jain PU programmes, said the trend has picked up over the last three years. “Most of these students are toppers from ICSE schools even though our cutoff is only 70%. They are well-informed and genuinely interested in humanities. It is no more a choice taken up by science and commerce rejects. Students have realized the multiple opportunities they can tap in while choosing a career. Communications has become very popular among them,” he added.
Colleges offer a combination of history, social science, political science, economics and psychology, of which students have to take up any four and two languages, preferably English and Kannada/Sanskrit, and in some international schools, students can choose a foreign language too.
Schools have also noted the trend and offer a variety of combinations, particularly mathematics/statistics and computer science with humanities in the higher secondary level. Naveen KM, managing director of
Trio World Academy
, said, “The general perception that students studying humanities are inadequately prepared for employment and earn lower salaries is changing now. On the contrary, students with this discipline find a variety of career opportunities in education, media, law, finance, marketing, hospitality, communications and civil services. We are witnessing a significant increase in demand from students opting for arts.”
Mansoor Ali Khan, member of
Delhi Public School
management board, said, “We are also encouraging students to study arts because the nature of jobs in the market is changing. Counselling has helped them understand the potential in pursuing arts career-wise and even to get better remuneration.”
Aloysius D’Mello, principal,
Greenwood High International School
, said the trend is clear that many students are opting for humanities. It offers an array of opportunities rather than the oft-sought engineering; the school has seen a 30% rise in the number of applications.
Millennials prefer creative fields
Employability has reduced in engineering unlike in old times. The market is such that unless you are good at something, a job is not guaranteed or secured. Millennials now want to work in creative fields like wildlife photography, social media or communications, linguistics, graphic design and fashion. It is more about liberal arts and not conventional arts subjects, which means they can choose to study mathematics with history and sociology. Also, today’s professionals do not stick to a particular job for more than a decade and switch to ones they are passionate about. Students have realised that already and are pursuing their hobbies to shape their careers
Sudha Bhogle | educationist
(With inputs by Kanika Kumar)
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