Mangaluru: Creating an environment for competitive examination to bring students towards conventional courses and designing these courses to help students in this competitive world.

These were among the suggestions in the seminar on ‘Role of Management in college administration and How to reinvigorate conventional courses in degree colleges’ here on Wednesday.

The seminar was organised by the Private College Managements’ Association covering Mangalore University.

In his keynote address, Jayaraj Amin, Professor and Chairman of Mangalore University’s Department of Political Science, said that colleges in New Delhi are getting a good number of students for conventional courses because the students are opting for them to prepare for competitive examinations.

“There is an environment for competitive examinations. Lecturers there act as mentors. Such an environment was lacking in educational institutions here,” he said. Taking his own department as an example, Mr. Amin said: “If lecturers help in getting two or three students crack IAS and KAS examination here, then you see a steady steam of students for Political Science.”

He said students for postgraduate courses here come with a narrow mentality and lecturers needed to widen the outlook of students and instill competitive spirit.

Samuel K Samuel, Principal of Crossland College, Brahmavar, said curriculum of conventional courses should be designed to help students.

“There is lot of scope for experiential learning. Introduce aspects that interests students. We should know what they want,” he said.

Joint Director of Collegiate Education, Mangaluru region, Udayashankar H. said colleges face problem in redesigning conventional courses as government, largely, provides grant-in-aid only to conventional courses.

Only few educational institutions such as St. Aloysius College and Christ College have succeeded in getting grant-in-aid for conventional courses redesigned to provide new options for students.