Shrey Gupta, 21, landed a Rs 39 lakh annual pay package at Deutsche Bank as an investment banker last year. Gupta, a third year B.Com (Hons) student of the Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), University of Delhi, was among the lucky ones picked for campus placement by investment and consultancy behemoths such as Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Future First, McKinsey, KPMG, Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Annual salaries can zoom up to Rs 36 lakh and even the average is at Rs 10.5 lakh per year. Which explains why SRCC has topped the INDIA TODAY-Nielsen Best Colleges Survey for commerce, followed by St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, and Loyola College, Chennai.
For P.C. Jain, principal, SRCC, such honours are routine. Every year, Jain bids goodbye to several talented students, receives thousands of stellar applications for admission and selects the best among the best. But this year, because of the change in admission procedure, only those who could apply came. The college was able to admit 640 students in commerce and 148 in economics.
"For the past 40 years, we have been striving to bring commerce education at par with the coveted medicine and engineering courses. When we announced the 100 per cent cut off, we knew students would be able to fit the bill," says Jain. This year, the cut off for admission into the commerce stream for non-commerce students was 100 per cent. Even though it came as a shock for many, SRCC received a record number of applications even before the second cut off was announced. This time, the college admitted a record 413 students for its two courses.
The college now aims to provide a more professional experience to its students at the undergraduate level. Jain calls this "a more industry-oriented course". Apart from regular classes, SRCC organises regular industry visits and invites corporates for inter personal interactions with students. Mehak Nanner, a second year commerce students says, "We had a video conference with Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit this year. He told us the advantages of working in the commerce industry." The college has a 1:12 teacher-student ratio with 108 faculty members. Also, all the classes have LCD screens and most theory papers are taught through the audio-visual medium. The fully air-conditioned college today boasts of a Rs 40-crore sports facility with a basketball court, four badminton courts with a spa and a cafeteria, which will be functional for students from this academic year. Clearly, academics is not the only priority. One of the most active and effective societies at SRCC is Students in Free Enterprise, which works for entrepreneurship among the most underprivileged sections of society.
NINETY-ONE AND NOT DONE
In early 1920, seven leading businessmen from Delhi established the Commercial Education Trust and Commercial School became the first school to be set up under it.The school introduced a post-matriculation diploma programme in commerce under the supervision of R.K.Kumar, who later became the first principal of Commercial College, after its affiliation to the University of Delhi in 1926. In 1932, the college was upgraded to the status of a degree college. In 1951, it converted itself into one specialising in commerce and economics streams. It was also rechristened as SRCC.
St. Xavier's College, Kolkata, is placed second in this year's survey. "Its committed faculty, a united community of students and an apolitical atmosphere makes St. Xavier's what it is today," says Rev. J. Felix Raj SJ, principal, St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. Of course, placement in top multinational corporations is another reason the college attracts hundreds of applicants each year.
Tata Consultancy Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Wipro and IBM are just a few of the mammoth corporations that recruit from campus each year. With 12 societies such as the Bengali Literary Society, Xavierian's Theatrical Society and 19 committees such as the Dress Code Committee and Internal Quality Assessment Committee, as well as outreach programmes for students, the college has rightly acquired second position. The college has also managed to set its curriculum and teaching methods to suit international standards.
"The curriculum is more student-oriented. It gives personal attention to students," says the principal. The multidisciplinary Loyola College, Chennai, has been ranked No 3 this year. The college doesn't focus only on business studies and strategy but also overall development of leadership qualities among students. The college has two international exchange programmes and has signed international memorandum of understanding with 33 universities abroad. "The objective is not just for students to learn functional subjects of commerce, but also to engage in holistic development to be industry-ready," says Francis Jose, head of commerce department, Loyola College, Chennai.
"Apart from this, we are also working on infusing sciences in commerce so that if commerce students want to start a business in a scientific stream they can easily understand the needs and specifications," says Jose. They have also launched the Loyola 2025 future plan in their centenary year. With continuous infrastructural development and revision of syllabus, no wonder students flock to the Loyola campus every year.
