With more students opting for courses in bio-technology and IT, candidates for B.Ed courses seem to be dwindling drastically

Indication of a shortage of teachers in the near future is looming on the horizon with the number of students opting for B.Ed courses almost flat-lining, and professional courses are seeing more takers. It was just a few years ago that the city saw a major B.Ed boom, which led to Bangalore University (BU) increasing the number of colleges offering teaching courses.


No takers: During the last academic year, there were no takers for
B.Ed courses in 22 of the 149 colleges. File pic

Back in time
In 2003-2004, there were only 20 colleges offering the course, but the numbers had increased triple-fold to 133 in the following year. The last academic year however, there were no takers for B.Ed courses in 22 of the 149 colleges.

BU Vice Chancellor N Prabhudev, said, "There is definitely a slump now, and it is probably because of poor opportunity in the education sector. Besides, studentsu00a0 assume there's more scope with the IT-BT sector."

The other side
Nagaraj, the director of BES College, said, "Students just don't seem interested in teaching anymore. They just join other courses if they have sufficient marks."

Mrigank Sharma, a student, said, "When i had to choose courses, I opted to do something in medicine since there is a huge boom in the bio-technology sector where I know the opportunities are more."