How to select a college course after Class 12th

By Dr. Goutam Chatterjee

More often than not, students do not wish to pursue the most popular degree offered in their stream for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons which I regularly hear are to do with: involvement in sports, music or performing arts, financial constraints, self-realisation of one’s weakness or just the desire to do things differently. The reasons may be many more but before any student wants to opt for a variation from the obvious course of action, it’s important to know the exact career path one is likely to get in the chosen UG course. Keeping this objective in mind, a stream-wise analysis is given in subsequent paragraphs for the students to identify and select the right UG courses after 12th for themselves.

The streams

Majority of students follow one of the three streams in their high school, namely – Arts or Humanities, Science or PCM/PCB/PCMB and Commerce.

Common careers for all streams

Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) offered services like IAS/IPS/IFS/IRS, acting, modeling, photography, radio jockey, journalism and bank probationary officer’s jobs are available to students of all the streams. If one has any of the above mentioned career objectives, then he or she need not bother too much to choose a particular UG course or college. Each of the mentioned careers has a specific skill-set requirement, therefore, while pursuing a UG course; students need to focus on developing such skill sets side-by-side. Education is another field where students from all the streams can make a career. However, one difference is that stream wise remunerations & perks differ greatly, in case of private sector institutions. For example, a professor of Arts may not even earn half of what a professor of engineering can earn.

Common factors impacting quality of career

Besides choosing a particular UG course, there are some common factors which decide the type of career, career growth, position, remuneration and social status one would achieve after successful completion of the course. These are rating/quality of the institution, whether regular or through distance/correspondence mode, whether the chosen institute is a new or established college and whether it offers campus drives or not. For example, a graduate from IIT will have an entirely different career path from a graduate of a private engineering college. Similarly, an MBA graduate of IIM will have an entirely different career from a graduate of Sikkim Manipal University’s Distance mode education.

Asses yourself

Decision to pursue a course must be taken after carefully assessing oneself. In majority of the cases, parents dream about making their wards a huge success in their life and thus without really giving much thought to their children’s aptitude, capability and IQ, they force them to pursue a popular course. For example, due to availability of a huge number of engineering seats in private colleges today, parents push their average children to take up BTech courses. The result is a high percentage of non-employable engineering graduates in India. Similarly, it could be said that one cannot hope to pursue television journalism unless the student is a good orator, be it in any language.

Criteria to select UG courses in Arts stream

Those students who wish to pursue a career through UPSC or banking sector need to select an honour’s degree course with specific subjects that are typically scoring in competitive exams. Such selection will give them the advantage of not requiring to pursue PG. Those students who think that they may choose academic field as a teacher or trainer, must select subjects which are also offered for PG courses, otherwise, later it would be a difficult proposition to switch to a subject which is unknown to them. The arts stream students can become administrators, editors, academicians, hospitality executives and so on. But in all such cases, one should be ready to pursue PG to maximise the prospects in their career ahead. Today, the BA degree has somewhat lost its relevance and people are choosing more specific courses like bachelor of hotel management, BBA or bachelor of mass communication, and rightly so. Even some dual degree courses or integrated degrees like BA+LLB are very attractive for those who wish to make a career in law, for instance.

Read More: Courses after 12th in Arts and Humanities

Criteria to select UG course in Commerce stream

The open economy, international trade, stock markets, banks and financial institutions are the major driving forces of growth in the current world economic scenario and thus commerce degrees are rapidly advancing as top courses in India. The obvious choice for any commerce student is to pursue a degree in BCom, with English and Informatics practices as the important elective subjects. The brighter students must choose CA or CWA as the UG course to maximise their career progression. Later, MBA-finance remains the top destination for the brightest in the financial sector.

Criteria to select UG course in Science stream

For PCM students – engineering, and for PCB students – MBBS/BDS, remains the top priority. However, if someone wants to break away from the beaten track; pursuing BSc, BArch, BCA, Biotechnology, Pharmacy or even Mass Communication is not a bad idea. Only thing one must consider before exercising the option is to look for a better institution, because for these degrees that would matter a lot.

Conclusion

Merely choosing a UG degree randomly will not suffice unless a student carefully analyses the various career options available after graduation, one’s own aptitude and effort that one can put into obtaining a quality degree. The general trend, while selecting a UG course is to follow market trend but remember – “Market demands are temporary but talent and skills are in demand forever”.

About the author:

Dr. Goutam Chatterjee is an ex-IAF officer of aeronautical engineering branch and have worked in several organization at high posts like DGM of AEM Pvt Ltd, Noida, Vice Principal of GRK Institute of Science & technology, Head of ECE department of GLA Engineering college, Director of very prestigeous Oriental group etc. He is currently the Director of Trinity Institute of Technology & Research.