Mumbai: St Xavier’s College is likely to adopt a two-shift system from the 2026-27 academic session, once their first batch under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 reaches the fourth year. The premier institute has been considering the idea of two shifts since the start of the current academic year. In the meantime, the college is working towards shifting the junior college classes to a vacant building on the St Xavier’s School campus behind the college, also managed by the Jesuit Board.
While commerce classes for junior college students are already being conducted on the school campus, plans are in the pipeline to shift arts classes too, said a college official. He added it may be a little difficult to move the science students as their laboratories are on the main campus. The college has also advanced the lecture timings for undergraduate courses such as BCom. The lectures for the BCom course were earlier at 5pm, which are now moved to 3pm, so that teachers who come in the morning session can continue to teach this batch of students too, he added. Unlike many other colleges, St Xavier’s offers around 30 open electives to its students, for which additional classrooms are required.
“From the coming academic year, we are also planning to start two more courses—an MA in transformational leadership, an apprenticeship-embedded programme in collaboration with the Teach for India organisation, and a BSc in computational biology. The course structure is ready, and we have already taken the necessary permission from the higher education department authorities. Once these programmes start, we may face a serious shortage of space,” said principal Rajendra Shinde. The college recently added BCom (accounting and finance), apart from other master’s programmes. Classes for BAF are already being conducted in the school building.
TOI had earlier reported about the committee set up by the college to review similar policies in other leading colleges in the country. It has become a necessity given the college’s plans for expansion and also to find a solution to the serious shortage of infrastructure in the current campus for accommodating students after the three-year undergraduate programmes were converted to four-year ones in 2023.
The college is considering the possibilities of running aided and unaided courses in different shifts, or undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in different shifts, or dividing the shifts faculty-wise, for instance, having arts and commerce in one shift and science in others, said Shinde. He added they are weighing their pros and cons. The final implementation plan will be ready only once the college manages to draw up the timetable for all courses in shifts, he added.
Space constraint has been a perennial problem for city colleges. For St Xavier’s, it is more of a problem, as their building is a heritage structure and cannot grow vertically.