Bring back BMS, say students

The rolling back of the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme has broughtjoy to both teachers and students at the university level, but for faculty teaching and students pursuing Bachelor of Management Studies, it has offered only little satisfaction to the current 2013-16 batch pursuing the course.

After much outrage and confusion over whether BMS should be retained as a course in Delhi University or not which is one of the most popular non-technical professional and management courses, BMS has been scrapped and converted into the old format, offering three different courses under the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences.

Conceived as a compact four-year course comprising Bachelor of Finance and Investment Analysis (BFIA), Bachelor of Business Economics (BBE) and Bachelor of Business Studies (BBS), BMS was introduced with much fan-fare in 2013 and was affiliated to Delhi University’s prestigious Faculty of Management Studies.

However, in the new scheme of things, post the controversial rollback of the FYUP, BMS has been scrapped and in its stead BFIA, BBE and BBS, will be taught separately and in different colleges under the commerce stream, without the added advantage of being affiliated to the FMS.

At present there are as many as 13 colleges which will be offering this new course pattern. Some of these colleges include Gargi, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, Keshav Mahavidyalay, College of Vocational Studies and Shivaji College to name a few.

Notably only Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies offers the BFIA course.

The current faculty is very much against the scrapping of the BMS degree as they consider BMS a very well-thought course structure, offering a larger paradigm of exposure to the students that these three courses would fail to do separately.

Concerned about the students and demanding revival of BMS, Dr Surinder Singh, BMS Professor, College of Vocational Studies tells Metrolife, “the course will have to be redesigned, shrinking three years into two.

What UGC did is not satisfactory as it was a really good course under FMS which gained a lot of limelight for being a good mix of vocational courses. However, because of the dumping, the new batch won’t get an opportunity to learn something as vast as BMS.”

With admissions in full swing prior to the scrapping of FYUP, the university had received as many as 25,357 applications for the BMS course offering 840 seats.

Following the scrapping of BMS, availability of seats in the new structure remains 62 for BFIA, 277 for BBS and, 554 for BBE, similar for the year 2012-13. The University has been carrying out the admissions to BFIA, BBS and BBE (as separate courses) similar to the criteria previously decided upon for the BMS course which included 50 per cent weightage of an entrance exam apart from Class XII scores.

As the dismay over the scrapping of BMS continues, a question that wracks every BMS student of the class of 2013-16 is ‘what are our career prospects now?’, given that these students will now have to complete their complicated undergraduate course in three years instead of four, especially when a year has
already gone.

Unsure of her future, and feeling like a guinea pig, Neha, a BMS student from College of Vocational Studies tells Metrolife, “We chose the course because it offered 100 per cent placement and became the most attractive course last year. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has expressed support to us by not changing the course structure, but we are not sure of our future because no one would know what BMS was.”

“We are happy by the decision as we would be the only Bachelor’s degree course affiliated to the Faculty of Management Studies, but there remains a question on whether the industry will absorb us.

It would be difficult for the ones planning to go for a job directly after graduation as the industry may not recognise our potential, while for MBA aspirants it will be a win-win opportunity,” Khushali Agarwal, a current batch BMS student of Deen Dayal Upadhayaya College tells Metrolife.

“BMS, which was introduced as a merger of these three courses under FYUP, was a non technical course offering one of the best management programs which readied students for exposure in the mainstream, even without entering into higher studies for a Master’s degree,” Inder Jeet, Principal, College of Vocational Studies said, while referring to BMS as a ‘terminal degree’.