GU clueless about launch of foreign language courses

Arvind Bhandari,the Director of the Educational Multimedia Research Centre (EMRC),has not been informed about the courses or the launch date or any other details,

although the courses will be started at the EMRC centre.

The co-ordinator of the said course,Neeraj Arun,does not have a clear idea of the status of the French and German courses that were reportedly withdrawn in 2007.

He said: “We do have other foreign language diploma courses at the university,but I am unsure of the languages. We will now start with French,Greek,German,Spanish and Russian,and launch Chinese and Japanese later on. The language courses will be offered as diplomas,certificate and advance diploma courses for the professionals,and have a need-based format. There has been no faculty recruitment. The programme will mostly be supported by visiting faculty.”

Incidentally,the university had earlier launched the diploma courses in French and German in 2005.

University Executive Council member Manish Doshi said: “The French and German courses,which were started in 2005,turned out to be failures and were

withdrawn in 2007 after a consistent shortfall of students was noticed. In fact,even though these announcements have been made,they are only on paper. Not a single faculty or co-ordinator has been recruited for the courses.”

The director of the School of Languages,Vasant Kumar Bhatt,said,at present,only one European language is taught at the university,which is English. He said he was unaware of the fact that French and German courses had been withdrawn.