MNNIT to resume Master of Social Work prog after 6 yrs

Master of Social Work (MSW) course is all set to restart at Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT)-Allahabad from the forthcoming academic session. Admissions to MSW course will be held once again after six years for academic session 2024-25, said officials.

“The MSW course will be started again under the new National Education Policy-2020 from the academic session 2024-25 of the institute. Approval to run the course has been received from the Senate. Further process will also be completed soon,” said Prof LK Mishra, dean (academic), MNNIT while confirming the development.

The admission in MSW will be taken against 25 seats and the course will run under the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The MSW course was first started in MNNIT from 2009, almost 15 years ago, but admission to it was stopped from the academic session 2018- 19. At that time, admission to MSW was being taken against 30 seats in the institute and officials had cited lack of interest among students as the cause behind discontinuing it. Besides, the placement of MSW course students was also on the decline that led to the institute deciding to put the course on hold from the academic session 2018-19.

At that time, general category candidates with a minimum 60% marks or 6.5 CPI (Cumulative Performance Index on a 10-point scale) in qualifying bachelor’s degree could apply for the course, while the eligibility for SC/ST candidates was relaxed to 55% or 6.0 CPI. Admission was based on a written examination conducted by the institute and counselling was held at MNNIT-Allahabad.

The decision to put admissions to the course on hold was taken at a time when even the union ministry of human resource development (MHRD) had urged higher educational and technical institutes to consider stopping courses which were failing to attract students and securing good placements.

However, at that time itself, MNNIT officials had shared that the institute planned to re-launch the course after revamping it to the current needs of the industry and the times.

The Master of Social Work course has now been redesigned in its new avatar amidst growing renewed interest in such courses. In this, students will now study optional subjects along with the main subject. Many employment-oriented capsules like Technical Development, Language, Communication, Research Methodology and personality development have been included as optional subjects.