Mumbai: The Hassaram Rijhumal (HR) College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai, plans to implement a stricter attendance system from the current academic year. Students will be required to fulfil a minimum of 75% of the attendance criteria, a notice of which has also been circulated among students and the staff.
"We observed that students were taking attendance lightly, which had an impact on results, so we decided to make attendance a little stricter," said Pooja Ramchandani, the principal.
"We understand that students take professional courses, and while we are open to it, we believe that some components of academics are important. The value which can only be transmitted to children through classroom attendance and interaction with teachers," Ramchandani added.
While this mandatory attendance criteria is all set to roll out this year, it has not impacted the admission season for the college.
"The college has witnessed a rise in the number of applications, despite increasing the attendance mandate of classes," Ramchandani further informed. There is also a surge in applications for second-year and third-year courses.
The college is currently witnessing five times more applications for admissions than their current seat capacity for courses like Bachelor of Commerce (BCom), Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS) and Bachelor of Accounting and Finance amongst others. “We have an intake capacity of 1,000 students but we are receiving at least 4,000 applications for the BCom course,” she added.
“There are some colleges which are very strict regarding their attendance and require the students to fill certain minimum attendance criteria, but we are a little lenient on that front even now,” Ramchandani highlighted.
The admission season is currently ongoing and the college has released merit lists for admission to its degree courses, the cutoff for which went as high as 99% for BCom in the first merit list.