BA English: To Be or Not to Be?

Time of India

2 days ago

There was a time when a BA English literature course was the pathway to mastering the language and exposure to Western culture, which consequently provided access to govt jobs, the civil service, and positions of influence.
From the 1970s, when graduation became mainstream, the course started getting a bad reputation for being a bridge between school and marriage for girls with no intentions of a career, and for being the last option for those who couldn't find admissions in the popular courses. Even the poster boy of English language and literature, Shashi Tharoor, went for a BA in History in the 1970s, not English.
Cut to 2025, and 13 arts and science colleges under the University of Madras have opted to drop the course for the 2025-26 academic year, citing "poor enrolment".
Sources say enrolment for the course at these colleges was in single digits in the past two years against the sanctioned strength of 70 seats. In 2024-25, the university bodies, including the Syndicate and the Senate, gave approval to six colleges to withdraw the course.
The move doesn't come as a surprise, say professors, adding that enrolment has been dwindling for more than a decade now as students with English degrees are seen as having "limited career options".
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With no recruitment for govt colleges and schools in the past few years, most end up joining private schools and colleges as faculty where pay is poor. Though top colleges in major cities in the country still get a section of good students, post-Covid, there's been a disinterest in anything which requires one to read and focus for long hours, and parents and students look for ROI or 'Return on Investment' if they're paying donations, say teachers.
Also, "students of both genders now look for courses that guarantee job options with plum pay packages", which a traditional BA English course doesn't offer, says R Raman, Principal of Madras Presidency College.
Professors from mofussil areas say many students are intimidated by the English language, which is also a reason for them not selecting the course. At the same time, data on govt college admissions in the state reveals that BA English remains one of the top five courses as 1.68 lakh of 1.87 lakh applicants gave the course as one of their options this year.
Principals say the numbers may be because the fee is lower in the govt colleges and so students "don't mind" doing English as they are not spending much.
But several private colleges and new-age universities too are in a conundrum. Depending on the number of applicants, the management makes a decision on what courses to include, and there is little demand for English literature as a canonical subject, says a staff member who doesn't wish to be named.
"There is a trend of reformulating courses aligned towards technology, such as digital humanities. Also, it's more about how literature can be used to study contemporary society.
For example, how health is represented in literature."
A handful of colleges in Chennai, such as Women's Christian College (WCC), Ethiraj, and Stella Maris, have been constantly reinventing the course to make it relevant enough to draw in applicants.
"Students today are not into reading, and certainly not keen on the old tomes. Right from the 1980s, skill-based elements were added to our traditional BA English course," says Lillian Jasper, Principal of WCC. "The course has advertising, a bit of journalism and travel writing; and the social element pervades all the subjects.
" So they have a social history of English literature, besides contemporary Tamil literature in translation.
Eco-literature is also popular among the new additions of the past decade. "We often screen environmental documentaries and take students on field trips; it's not just classroom teaching," says Lillian. There is also a distinct shift from canonical British texts to the literature of the colonies as well as that of America, which are among the reasons English is one of the most sought-after courses at WCC.
Even at the prestigious St Stephen's College, New Delhi, they don't teach Shakespeare as such, but unconventional or Indian adaptations of it, says Ashley N P, Professor at the college which still has a strong traditional BA English literature course.
"It's the age of AI where the need is to teach how to give the right prompts to ChatGPT, not how to write. One of the exercises I give my students is to find what's wrong in a ChatGPT result," says Ashley.
Besides teaching and research, the modified courses open up creative and content-related career avenues such as content writing for NGOs, research organisations, and digital spaces; copywriting for advertising firms, human resource management, public administration, and translation, besides journalism.
Above all, you cannot quantify liberal arts courses on "what you can get out of it", which is how every course is being sold today, says Ashley.
"Even in foreign universities, there is a tendency to advertise 'takeaways' like in a sales pitch, which doesn't fit into the liberal arts structure."
There is this 'MBAfication' and 'vocationalisation' of all the courses, but in the age of AI, ChatGPT can always make better PPTs than you, he says.
"We don't teach Shakespeare or Amitav Ghosh, but how to read them, how to read history and culture. You can't hurry it, you develop critical thinking skills slowly by constant interactions with peers, teachers, authors, listening to countless seminars and collecting information from other sources.
"
A degree in literature, or any field in humanities, can foster a culture of critical thinking and the ability to question the existing social structures, says Sreelakshmi N Sreejith, a third-year student of International Relations at the Shiv Nadar Institute of Eminence, New Delhi.
Universities have accumulated knowledge over the years and knee-jerk reactions like randomly picking courses which sound new-age will do more harm than good, he feels.
"Rethinking a discipline doesn't mean abandoning it, but looking at it differently. Without a sense of history, the new-age courses don't make sense. What we need is a serious study of the state of higher education in India."
(With inputs by A Ragu Raman)
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