Arts students opt for BCom, BBA, demand for BA drops

More and more students from arts background at the pre-university level are opting to study commerce courses such as BCom and BBA, inadvertently reducing the demand for humanities, according to the Department of Collegiate Education.

Science courses now have more students than arts programmes this year, something unheard of in recent years. “Since the admission process for this year began, we have received nearly 65,000 applications for commerce, 23,000 for science and 17,000 for arts. Science courses usually get the least attention from students,” an official in the department said.

“It’s not as if science courses are getting more applications this year. The number is more or less the same as last year. Science has moved to the second spot because of low interest in arts.”

S V Nandavadagi, a professor at RC College of Commerce and Management, echoed the opinion. He said that most of the new students at the college were from commerce or science background, though some were from the arts stream too. “So far, we have received 3,000 applications for 900 BCom and 144 BBA seats. I would say around 5% are from arts background,” he said.

According to the DCE official, several universities have allowed affiliated colleges a lot of flexibility, which has encouraged such trends. “Last year, three universities allowed arts students to opt for commerce. This year, some more have allowed it,” he said.

The trend, though, is more visible in government and aided colleges.

Private and autonomous colleges haven’t seen much of this phenomenon.

“The number of arts students applying for commerce  at our college is negligible,”
Dr Lalitha Raman, head of commerce department at Jyothi Nivas College (autonomous), said. “Maybe one student in BCom and one or two in BBA at the most.”

Online admission

All government and aided degree colleges this year started receiving applications online. Online forms were to be introduced last year but technical snags meant the scheme was restricted to a few colleges in 2015.

Undergraduate admissions will go on till July.