Alma mater: Amartya Sen with students at Presidency College

Many youngsters have been inspired to take up economics for higher studies after Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in 1998,” says Sunanda Sanyal of Educare, the career consultancy firm. Sen’s achievements, according to Sanyal, have made many individuals realise that there is much more to economics than endless conjectures and the intricacies of different graphs. The subject generates a great deal of interest, making it one of the most popular subjects in the last five years.

“Admission to the economics course in colleges has been growing at a steady rate of 10 per cent over the past five years,” says Ranjit Hoskote, professor of economics at Bombay University. He points out that more and more colleges are offering economics as a subject at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Career opportunities have also widened with economists being able to foray into multidisciplinary fields like sociology, geography, demography and even politics. “There is no doubt that economics will continue to attract bright minds in the country,” asserts Hoskote.

If economics has been popular for the past five years, so has been English. One of the eternally fascinating subjects, a part of the nation’s colonial legacy, it has carved its niche over the years. “English is now part and parcel of Indian culture and Indian English uniquely so,” says professor Ranjan Dhar, a career consultant based in New Delhi.

Dhar feels that the boom in jobs requiring English skills has come hand in hand with outsourcing and it is now considered important to speak the language as well as to write it. Dhar’s views find an echo in P. Madhusudan, a media expert based in Chennai, who says the popularity of English as a subject has grown enormously over the years. “Taking up English honours is considered to be as prestigious today as it was five years ago and students of English literature find jobs in newspapers, radio and television,” says Madhusudan.

Amala Chatterjee, a city-based linguist, agrees with the notion that English is getting increasingly popular. “The subject has endless possibilities and students go on to do masters and some even do research,” he says.

Among science subjects, a perennial favourite is engineering. Says Prajit Ghosh, principal of Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Calcutta, “Core engineering subjects like civil, mechanical, electrical and electronics still remain firm favourites among undergraduate students.” Ghosh stresses that although the range of professional subjects has grown over the years, there has been no lack of demand for core engineering subjects. On the contrary, new development projects in the manufacturing and real estate sectors have given a boost to the demand for good engineers.

Dilip Singhvi, a Gurgaon-based educational consultant, who is an entrepreneur and an electrical engineer, explains that despite all the talk of a slump in core engineering, college admission figures all over the country show a persistent rise over the past five years. “With the growth in private engineering colleges all over the country, the demand for core engineering subjects has risen steadily and is likely to maintain an upward trend for the next 20 years,” states Singhvi.

Core engineering now has a serious challenger in the form of information technology. Demand for IT courses has skyrocketed in the past five years with some institutes registering more than a 20 per cent increase in student intake. A.C. Ganguli, principal of Bengal College of Engineering and Technology, Durgapur, says IT courses have been a favourite at the undergraduate level. “We receive far more applications for the course mainly due to the fact that IT firms pay good salaries and offer opportunities for international travel,” he says.

Ganguli’s views are echoed by Adam Adamou of Adam’s, an IT consultant firm based in Mumbai. “IT courses have given a new dimension to education in India. They are so popular with students that many of them willingly give up other subjects to join this product of the new age,” he says. “There is no doubt that IT courses are among the hot favourites of students,” he adds.

The science of playing God or biotechnology has also worked its way into the public consciousness. “Biotechnology courses have become popular at the undergraduate level,” says Joseph V.G., chairman of Garden City College, Bangalore. “The principal fascination for the subject lies in the fact that biology and a variety of other subjects like chemistry and genetics are combined to give it a distinctive flavour.”

“The subject is allied to the medicine industry and the development of new drugs by multinational companies can only aid the subject’s popularity,” says Christopher Lukas, CEO of Imogen Inc, a pharmaceutical firm based in Bangalore.