111-year-old Sydenham college in Mumbai taps alumni to revive lost glory

A former student of the college located in Churchgate, Nilesh Shah, who is MD of Kotak Mahindra AMC and led the endowment initiative with his batchmates, said, “A huge credit of our success goes to the training we received at the college. This endowment fund will help the newer generation now.” Shah studied Commerce at Sydenham from 1983-87 and remembered how it was the support from college and people around that helped him excel.

At times when many government colleges are facing challenges over funds for various reasons, Asia’s first college to offer Commerce since 1913, Sydenham College, now expects to bring back the old glory with renewed efforts through alumni relations. According to college principal Dr Shrinivas Dhure, out-of-the-box thinking is required to gain excellence.

Being a government college, earlier affiliated to Mumbai University, Sydenham depended mostly on government aid. Even now, since 2019, it is part of the Dr Homi Bhabha State University (HBSU), one of the first cluster universities in the city formed by combining four government-run colleges. For funding, it largely continued to depend on government which had limitations.

But as the college started reaching out to alumni a couple of years ago, it brought about a change. Among other initiatives taken through alumni support are enhancing Wi-Fi connectivity at the college building, digitisation of the library, redevelopment of its garden. Last month, it concluded an employment readiness workshop for students which was funded by alumni.

Apart from accepting monetary funding, the college has also started holding master-classes for students with different industry experts, who are essentially alumni members. Highlighting that the college’s alumni list includes names of stalwarts from various sectors, Dhure said, “They all would love to give back to their alma mater in different ways possible; provided they have guarantee that it is used well.”

Dhure underlined that its alumni is spread across a wide range of sectors from finance, marketing to entertainment and media industry which has turned out to be helpful for students not only in academics but also in co-curricular activities.

He said, “Under National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, internships and placements are now mandatory even for conventional commerce colleges. Thanks to our alumni who are placed at good positions in sectors such as commerce, economics, finance and marketing; industry doors have opened for us.”

Realising the benefits of alumni relations, this year the college received registration from more than 70 students to be part of the alumni cell, which essentially connects with alumni for various events on campus and eventually becomes part of the larger alumni association of the college after passing out.

The college is also looking at alumni support to bridge the gap in students-teacher ratio. Dhure said, “Currently we have only 40 per cent of the required number of teachers. Realising the limitations for teacher appointments, we are exploring to have few good-quality faculty members sponsored by alumni. We are already in talks with alumni members regarding it.”