The world is getting saturated with engineers and architects, with individuals who have an MBA or an analytics degree. Year by year, the number of these people keeps increasing and thus the unemployment rate also keeps increasing. Every individual is blindly going into disciplines such as engineering or management without considering his/her strengths and interests. This is the main reason why a lot of students tend to not cope up with the studies and the syllabus. This is also one of the reasons why students in their 10+2 should be aware of all the career options and the degree programs that are available. There are various courses other than Engineering or Commerce such as Arts, Science, Education, various ITI courses, and so many others.
There are a lot of good Arts colleges in India but a lot of students either do not know about these colleges are they prefer not to apply for a course such as an Arts course because of peer pressure or pressure from parents and teachers. Students should realize that this is their career and not somebody else’s and they need to start making a career out of what they are good at. Arts education mostly includes performing arts education (such as dance, music, theatre), literature, painting, poetry, etc. There are a lot of Visual and Audio arts courses such as photography and videography, sound engineering, design, etc.
A lot of universities are understanding the importance of non-traditional courses and are introducing these courses in their curriculum. For example, Manav Rachna University has followed the trends in recent years and has included a course known as Nutrition & Dietetics. This is a really good tactic because a lot of people are into having healthier lifestyles and following a diet and basically having a good human form and by providing a course about how to gain all of these will get people interested and thus this will also lead to the generation of a new career option as the students who graduate from this course could become consultants.
Non-traditional courses also bring about the use of non-traditional methods of education i.e; recorded online courses, live online classrooms, etc. In the traditional method of education, test and exams are one way to make sure that the student is learning but in non-traditional education methods, students are not required to give a test as if they feel that they are lacking a few skills and knowledge about the topics, they can come back and relearn again and again. There are also live discussion groups either on a video conference or on an online discussion forum where all the participants of the course/classroom can get together and discuss what each one of them perceived and can also teach one another.
This is actually a good idea that can be used in traditional courses too, where colleges or universities can conduct a group discussion in a class so students taking that class can understand the topic better by debating and discussing it. This will allow students to be able to learn and understand the topics and thus the traditional method of knowledge verification can be totally done away. In India, the way the tests and exams are conducted often leads to the promotion of rote learning as students will usually just mug up answers for important topics and that will be the end of it. This is not good as some of the topics being taught are really crucial and important for the job that requires it.
In the many art colleges in India, students are usually always put through group discussions. This is mostly because with art forms such as literature and poetry, the understanding varies from person to person as the individual experiences and connection with the words are different. This will allow the students to understand the concept of perception and that it varies from person to person. The methods of education may vary from college to college and among various universities as it totally depends on the course and the weightage of theoretical and practical parts in the course. In universities such as Manav Rachna University, the lecturers are mostly focused on developing skills and tools that candidates need to be able to thrive in their careers. Courses such as Applied psychology, Hotel Management, Social Work, Liberal Arts, Social & Political Studies, etc. require more of a modern way to education rather than the traditional method.
More colleges need to understand the importance of changing the methods of teaching as the times keep changing and the way that students can learn and understand also changes.
