Mumbai: The classrooms are still there, as are the old college buildings that have opened their doors to generations of Mumbai students. But in the aided colleges affiliated with Mumbai University (MU), fewer young people are now choosing to study humanities or commerce.Data from the university shows that first-year enrolment in arts courses has fallen by a staggering 54% over the past 15 years—the sharpest decline across traditional undergraduate programmes. Commerce admissions have dropped by nearly 20% over the same period. Science, in contrast, has managed to record an improvement in student numbers, going up by nearly 11% in the same period.Educationists see the figures as more than a change in academic preference. They describe them as signs of the gradual erosion of public institutions that have historically made higher education accessible to students across social and economic backgrounds.They blame the steady slide on a combination of declining academic standards, outdated syllabi and the growing appeal of specialised, industry-oriented programmes that appear to promise better employment prospects. Unless aided colleges update their courses, invest in teaching and respond to a rapidly changing job market, experts fear that conventional degree programmes will continue to lose students. The consequences, they warn, will be felt most sharply by those who cannot afford expensive private colleges or specialised professional courses.“Our society has become so technical that it no longer recognises the importance of the humanities,” says former St Xavier’s College principal Fr Frazer Mascarenhas. “History, sociology, psychology and English literature develop perspectives and social skills that technical education cannot provide. We are progressing towards becoming a technocratic society, but one that does not necessarily feel fulfilled. This is a serious decline in human civilisation.”A former MU vice-chancellor says the decline in aided programmes was largely the result of their failure to change with the times. “The respective boards of studies have not thought seriously about making courses relevant and syllabi have not been updated with contemporary content,” he says. He points out that while universities elsewhere had reinvented the humanities through liberal arts programmes, aided colleges continued to offer the same old combination of subjects. “Liberal arts in private universities of India and abroad allow students to choose from a diverse basket that may include law, management, economics and the humanities. Here, the combination of subjects has remained largely unchanged, and humanities courses continue to be taught in their traditional form. They must be modified to meet the needs of today’s students,” he says.He adds that colleges are also struggling because teaching posts remain vacant, while the procedure for appointing the faculty continues to be archaic and cumbersome. “Courses cannot improve unless colleges are able to recruit good teachers and regularly revise what they teach,” he says.S S Mantha, former AICTE chairperson, says students seek degrees that have a clear connection with employment and are, therefore, moving towards AI, data science, cybersecurity, business analytics and digital marketing, among others. “Over the past decade, there has been a rapid increase in private universities, skill universities, deemed universities, autonomous colleges, foreign university campuses and online and hybrid education providers. Many institutions now offer interdisciplinary and industry-oriented programmes, increasing competition for students who would have previously enrolled in traditional degrees. These universities spread the same pool of applicants across many more institutions.”
