Osmania University (OU) has started working on setting up a Civil Services Academy and will offer free Civil Services coaching to aspirants as a part of it. The discussion around setting this up has been underway for three months now and if it wasn't for Omricon or the extended Sankranthi vacations, it would have been up and functioning already.
This is not the first time OU has offered this though. They had a competitive exam coaching centre for SC, ST, OBC and students from other minority groups back in 1980s and this was funded by the state government. After the funds were halted, around 2005, UGC decided to help and that stopped as well. "Now, we are trying to introduce new academic activities in OU and this Civil Sevices Academy is one of the steps we are taking for it," says Prof Chinta Ganesh, Principal, University College of Arts & Social Sciences, OU and the director of the academy.
The aim is to encourage the students of OU to get into the Civil Services and Prof Ganesh, who has been passionate about this cause for over two decades, so much so that very many of his students have cracked the exam, presented the proposal to make this happen for Civil Services Prelims and Mains. for now. And other competitive exams like Staff Selection Commission, railway recruitment, state services exams and a whole lot more, will follow, provided they have the funds.
"We have the infrastructure. For example, the Arts College building has huge classrooms which could be utilised. We will be engaging a few of our faculty members to take a few classes and will have to enlist the help of teachers from outside as well. This is because, for certain subjects, expertise is required," explains the professor who is also the Head of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at OU. The plan is to conduct classes from 2.30 pm to 7.30 or 8 pm and the budget for Civil Services Prelims and Mains has been pegged at Rs 25 lakh. Also, the classes will be conducted in the physical mode only.
To get things started, the idea is to first, issue a notification and assess the response. If more than the expected number of students show interest, then a screening test could be conducted. As of now, they are planning to take on 100 students. The prof, who is an alumnus of OU, shares, "In our days, many students from OU aspired for the Civil Services, but nowadays, it seems like the aspirations has come down. We want to inculcate the aspiration again in students."
