Colleges in Dakshina Kannada are seeing high demand for admission into Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) courses and students are opting BCA over BCom or BSc Hotel Management, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.
Aruna P Kamath, Principal of SDM College of Business Management said demand is more for BCA due to increased job opportunities and technological advancement and this trend, which started post-COVID, hasn't changed.
"For BCA, we have a total capacity of 120 and this year, we received 350 applications. All 120 seats are filled now. Last year, we received around 250 applications. Though there is demand for BCA, we cannot increase the intake as we need better infrastructure and additional staff," told Aruna to The New Indian Express.
Many colleges have not introduced any new courses since National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 already has many new programmes and there is high demand for existing courses like BCA.
"The demand for BCA is more due to technological advancement and digitalisation. Students and parents' assumption is that there is much scope for BCA now. Even Commerce students are opting for BCA now and the next preference of students is BCom. Though Business Management has less in demand outside, all our 210 seats are filled and we are planning to request Mangalore University to provide us with more seats," added Aruna.
Even BBA joins the list
At St Aloysius College as well, BCA and BBA courses are in demand. "We had to start one extra batch. Our intake for BBA and BCA is 240 each and we have asked for extra 80 seats each because of the demand," said Fr Praveen Martis SJ, Principal of St Aloysius College.
At Milagres Degree College in Mangaluru, there is high demand for BCA and BSc Hospitality Science. "We started a BCA course this year as we received many applications last year. In our first batch, all 40 seats are filled now and we are asking for an extension. We are expecting around 100 applications for BCA. This year there is a good response for BSc Hotel Management as 30 seats are already filled and the intake is 50," said PRO of the college.
At Shree Devi Institute of Technology in the city, the intake for BSC Hotel Management was 120 seats. It is one of the colleges to get the highest number of hotel management students but this year, admissions have not even crossed 10 as students are opting for BCA now.
"After COVID, everything was online and everyone thought computers were the next thing that was going to be. people used to work from home and there is a belief that it is going to sustain a lot. But there is a saturation point for those kinds of jobs. even MBA was in trend earlier. This trend over BCA will be there for the next couple of years,-" said a college lecturer.pic attachedStudents filling up forms for admissions at a college in Mangaluru
