The Delhi University witnessed a poor participation of students on the first day of its two-day central placement drive on Tuesday. Out of the 7,500 students from across the streams who registered themselves till Monday evening for the placements, around 300 students participated. Several students chose to stay away from the drive blaming it on the semester exams scheduled to begin next week.
"Semester exams are beginning next week. I could not make it to the placement drive despite registering myself because I have to study a lot. Many of my classmates also didn't attend because of exam preparation as placement drives require us to spend an entire day for it and we cannot afford it right now," said Shefali Goel, a final year student of Economics Honours from Hindu College.
Out of the total registered students, the ones seen participating appeared to be in stress as the entire day was spent attending seminars and submitting resumes to various companies and pending exam preparations. "I have an exam tomorrow. I could study properly due to the divided attention between the exam and placement drive. Half of the day is gone here," said Pankaj Patel, final year student of BA Programme.
According to JM Khurana, Dean of Students' Welfare (DWS), the timing of the placement is not entirely in the hands of the university. "We have to consider the time of the companies coming for placements and cannot take a call alone on the dates for interviews. We understand students must be having a hard time that's why after this two-day drive, the next session will begin after exams, somewhere around second week of December when students will be free."
This was not the only reason why students were found absent on the first day of placement drive. Some of the students skipped the central placement cell (CPC) as they were already had jobs in hand due to their respective colleges' placement cells in which they got short listed by reputed companies. "A reputed company already short listed some of us through the college placement cell last month. So I chose to skip the CPC for now," said Goel.