20, Jan 2012

Should the syllabus of a subject such as commerce include just theory and not practical experience? Is the experience of practical work a privilege that only science students can enjoy? The Commerce Department of the Bangalore University has revised its syllabus for its BCom, BHM, and BBM courses with the purpose of offering students learning opportunities outside the classrooms as well.

A major criticism of academics and a major complaint of the undergraduates in the State has been that the syllabus is almost entirely oriented toward theory, with little or no scope for practical work. The people running the human resource departments of companies, who will eventually recruit from among these graduates, complain about how the graduates are not industry-ready. A lot of time, they say, is wasted in giving new recruits on-the-job training for the first few months of the job.

To address the issue of graduates not having practical knowledge of the fields that they would later enter, the Commerce Department of Bangalore University (BU) has announced revised syllabi for three of their courses: Bachelor of Commerce (BCom), Hotel Management (BHM), and Business Management (BBM). University officials say that the revision has a more practical approach to learning and add that the new syllabi are a result of almost a year’s study by the Board of Studies.

Ramachandra Gowda, Dean of the Department of Commerce and Management, explained that the revision was meant to prepare the students for the implementation of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in India in 2015. “About three months ago, a German company had visited BU, and the delegates had appreciated the depth in the accounting syllabus,” he said.

According to BU Vice-Chancellor N. Prabhu Dev, the syllabus for the four-year BS Commerce course is also slated to be redesigned.
The new syllabus offers plenty of scope for students to move out of classrooms and into the work space. For instance, BHM students will be spending the whole of the fifth semester interning at a five-star hotel (their work would be assessed for 300 marks) and another 45 days of practical training in the sixth semester.

In Commerce and Management, a Skill Development module will be introduced, in which students will prepare financial statements such as notices for company meetings and memoranda of association, topics that are discussed under Corporate Administration. Some of the activity topics included under Marketing and Services Management are “Suggest strategies for development of a product” and “Develop an advertisement copy for a product.” Under Quantitative Analysis for Business Decisions, the topics are “Collect the age statistics of 10 married couples and compute correlation coefficient,” and “Collect the turnover of a company for seven years and predict the sales of the eighth year by using the method of least square.” Under Income Tax, the subjects are “Computation of Gratuity” and “Computation of Income Tax and the slab rates.”

“We have asked all colleges to maintain a business lab for practical assignments,” added Professor Gowda. In these labs, materials will be provided so that students learn how to transfer share certificates, open company bank accounts, file income tax returns, and perform other such business-related activities.

“There are close to four lakh students in BU colleges studying BCom. It will not be possible to offer practical training to all of them, which is why we have made establishing business labs compulsory,” he explained.

Similarly while BBM will focus on management, BCom will have accounting as its focus.
Dr. Prabhu Dev, during the varsity’s Academic Council meeting where the revised syllabus was accepted, directed his team to prepare a list of consultants who would absorb students as trainees.

Members of the staff who will be required to follow the new syllabus are being suitably prepared for this change. Nearly 200 lecturers have already been trained in IFRS with assistance from the Commerce Teachers’ Forum. Experts from outside will be invited to lecture on the subject of ‘Commodity Markets’, newly introduced for the fourth semester.
Recruitments and Gaining an Edge

Since the changes are being made with the express objective of making students familiar with the roles they will be playing in their future job environments, the graduates are expected to fare better in the job market. When asked if the revamped syllabus will translate into better placement opportunities, Professor Gowda said, “Nowadays, a large number of companies go to undergraduate colleges for recruitment, even to small government colleges. However, they complain of having to give on-the-job training again to these candidates. By providing this practical exposure, we are aiming at providing mid-level managers.”

With these changes on the cards, the students are naturally looking forward to the new syllabi, where they don’t just have to memorize answers to prove themselves, but also gain the more important firsthand work experience.

“At management fests, we often compete against management students from other States. Their syllabi are entirely different from ours, in that theirs is concurrent with financial trends. That is where we are beaten. The revision will help us get an edge,” said Bharath Bhushan, a II year BBM student.

Murtaza S., a II BCom student, said, “The practice of maintaining record books exists already. In most cases, students copy assignments from each other. The new syllabus is promising as it expects individual efforts, such as preparing financial statements and balance sheets independently. This will be the highlight.”