The Higher Education Department is considering discontinuing pre-university and postgraduate courses that have seen a sharp fall in student enrolment across Karnataka.
With students increasingly opting for professional and skill-based programmes, demand for several traditional arts, commerce and science courses has declined significantly.
The department has begun collecting data on course-wise admissions over the past three years to identify programmes that have consistently recorded very low or even zero enrolment in government colleges and universities.
Officials say the decline is more pronounced in urban areas, though rural regions have also seen reduced interest in some subjects.
Among the postgraduate courses witnessing low enrolment are MA in English, Kannada, Sociology, Political Science and Economics, as well as MSc in Mathematics and Physics. At the pre-university level, combinations such as History Kannada Psychology, Kannada Political Science History and Economics based combinations are seeing fewer takers.
In some colleges, admissions to certain courses have dropped by nearly 80 per cent, making it difficult to maintain infrastructure and quality teaching for just a handful of students. Officials say the growing preference for job oriented courses has contributed significantly to the declining interest.
