Colleges offer new courses keeping post-pandemic industry demand in mind

At BMCC College, two new courses are being offered from this year – B Com Fintech and B Com Honours. “During the Covid pandemic, we saw how technology has overtaken several aspects of finance and banking industry. There is dependence on e-transactions, rise of mobile payments industry, paperless banking, secure payment gateways and such. Today, there is a high demand for workers who have knowledge pertaining to Fintech like artificial learning and data analytics. We have seen several disruptions in the financial industry. That is why we thought of coming up with this course which will give the students an extra edge in the job market,” said principal Seema Purohit.

The B Com Honours course has been designed taking into consideration demands of the students pursuing or aiming to pursue job opportunities in sectors such as finance, management and taxation and professional courses like CA/CS/CMA, PG Programme from premier B-Schools in India and abroad, International Certifications like CFA/CPA etc.

“This course, again, is a response to the demand from industry. For the last several years, we have been seeing that students preparing for competitive courses like CA or CS don’t pay much attention to classroom teaching and are focused on article ship and preparations. Hence, their basics are not clear. They lack certain skills and we get feedback from industry that the quality of interns coming in is not good enough. Therefore, we decided to start this four-year course to be run with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI),” she said.

A few colleges have even tied up with foreign institutes to offer international certifications.

Symbiosis College has joined hands with the UK-based Institute of Analytics for its new course, B Com with Business Analytics, starting this year.

“Today when you see the job market, artificial intelligence and machine learning are becoming the buzzword and there are several jobs aligned to these skills…This is a course preparing our students for tomorrow. Also, post-pandemic, we have observed that offices are moving to work-from-home mode and several international jobs are available. Hence, having foreign certification becomes a plus point,” said principal Hrishikesh Soman.

Several city institutes have announced vocational degree courses this year. Fergusson College will offer two new Bachelor of Vocational (BVoc) degrees in Interior Design and Fashion Technology. Principal Ravindrasinh Pardeshi said that as compared to traditional degrees, these students will be “more privileged” because they will have vocational training along with conventional knowledge.

Two new media courses – ‘B.VOC. Media & Entertainment’ and ‘Certificate Course in Media Skills’ – will be introduced at Shri Siddhivinayak Mahila Mahavidyalaya run by the Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Samstha (MKSSS).The courses which will be taught at the the School of Media Activity Research & Technology (SMART).

Radhika Ingle, Director, SMART said, “Participation of girls in technology-based areas like video technology, sound engineering or production needs to be increased. Therefore, these courses have been designed with the objective of (providing them with) skill-based education.”