5 new HPAU courses for graduates

According to Vice-Chancellor Prem Kumar Khosla, all the fresh courses would be started with the staff in hand. The varsity authorities would keep on pursuing various central and state government projects to create more posts to update facilities in respective departments in the years to came.

“These degrees would help the agriculture students get immediate employment, which had been a problem hitherto,” he said. Khosla said the HPAU also proposed to have fresher and training courses for the agricultural graduates keeping in view various competitive exams.

The HPAU would also have NRI quota in degrees like Bachelor of Veterinary Sciences and Animal Husbandry and MBA, which have a greater scope of employment under the present conditions and are lucrative enough to attract NRIs.

g g g g The move to introduce journalism course by the department of languages of Basic Sciences College was initially opposed by the Agriculture College to the last moment, but when it was ultimately cleared by the academic council the Agriculture College authorities now want it to run under the extension department, pleading that the “Journalism programme has everything to do with agricultural extension rather than the language faculty,” it is learnt.Not only this, the Agriculture College high-ups refused to listen to the advise of Journalism experts form PAU and HPU (Punjab Agriculture University and Himachal Pradesh University ) that the name of the course should be Bachelor’s Degree is Journalism and Mass Communication and it should not be limited to farm writing only if the varsity actually wanted to open job avenues.

Misuse of vehicles by the HPAU officials has become a routine affair and more than the officials their families are seen enjoying the ride in or after the varsity timings. The staff is angry over the tendency, as on many occasions the vehicles have not been available to them on the campus for urgent works including that of shifting an employee emergently to hospital. “We have for long been demanding the pooling of vehicles under one head by the varsity administration so that any body in emergent need could be facilitated and the joy rides are put an end,” the HPAU employees say.

The varsity teachers have urged the authorities to construct more houses on the campus. “The rush of university employees seeking accommodation in the main town has consequented in manifold increase in the overall rent in Palampur, which is posing problems to ordinary people also, apart from recruits in the university,” they contend. They said only 20 per cent of the staff was currently being given varsity houses against the objective of residential farm university.