‘Arts, linguistics have job potential’

Madurai: At a recent event, school education secretary T Udhayachandran mentioned that most parents continued to force their wards to pursue medicine and engineering while there were many courses with great employment potential especially in the government sector having no takers. The poor response to languages and arts, especially social sciences, at Madurai Kamaraj University best illustrates this problem.

Registrar of Madurai Kamaraj University, Dr G Arumugam said that many of these courses which elicited no interest have a lot of job potential. For instance, candidates preparing for competitive examinations like UPSC can clear them easily if they take up subjects like political science, history and philosophy. Some courses like Mathematical Economics could land candidates central government jobs like that of statistician.

Apathy towards social sciences is most prevalent in Tamil Nadu, says Professor of Sociology at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, S Samuel Asir Raj. The situation is better in neighbouring Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh where a lot of students prefer taking up social sciences for their masters programme. Their inclination towards UPSC examinations could not be ruled out but there is increased political awareness among students in these states, he reasoned.

Further, the universities also should make efforts to turn the curriculum more engaging and imaginative for arts and social sciences. There are not enough debates or scientific thinking in subjects like History. For instance, the history of Tamil Nadu itself after colonial rule has to be debated and updated. Students studying social sciences should have more field exposure than classroom experience. “When such an approach is not undertaken, education is not acting as a vehicle of improvement and there are no takers”, Samuel Asir Raj added.

Educationalists say most students here prefer to take up jobs after undergraduation and engineering or integrated courses appear viable for them. Switching to technical studies after undergraduation is also prevalent, they said.