A change has been witnessed in the demand for agri-business management education here. Compared to previous years, many students have this year come forward to take admission to the two-year MBA (Agri-Business) programme that is being offered by the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) since 2007.
Till two years back, MBA (Agri-Business) here had taken a backseat with a meagre number of students turning up to take admission.
While all the 32 seats were filled up last year, this year till Saturday 25 students had taken admission to the course. College authorities expect that they will be able to fill up the total number of seats on August 22 when spot admissions will be held. Of the total admissions, 50 per cent are girls. Out of the 32 seats, only eight were filled up in 2009, which increased to 12 in the following year.
The University had been offering the course to only agriculture and allied graduates and in 2010, it opened the course to other graduates such as BCom, BSc, BBA, and BTech as well.
“OUAT is the first State agriculture university in Odisha to offer this unique course as per the guidelines of Indian Council of Agriculture Research. But due to lack of adequate publicity, we were not being able to fill up all the seats till last year,” said Samarendra Mohapatra, head of the department of agri-business management.
“Earlier, admission was restricted to agriculture graduates. But since 2010, we are inviting applications from BBA, BCom, BSc and BTech graduates since they are also very relevant for this agri-business management studies,” he said. The selection is being done on the basis of career assessment with 20 per cent (pc) weightage to matriculation, 30 pc to Plus-II and 50 pc to graduation.
Apart from OUAT, only Utkal University offers this course, but under the public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. “When we started, there was hardly any awareness regarding this new subject. Two years back, agri-business management became a full-fledged department in OUAT in terms of faculty and infrastructure,” said Mohapatra.
Explaining the job prospects, he said that there is a requirement of experts in agri-business in top non-governmental organisations, and nationalised banks. “The transformation of agriculture into a business activity has created a demand for professional management and use of modern technologies. Even UNESCO, UNICEF, and Government of India offer good jobs in these sectors,” he said.
Comments
0 comment