Delhi University’s School of Open learning (SOl) is giving competition to its top regular colleges as students with 100 per cent marks in their Class 12 examination are applying for seats in the SOl. This year, thirteen aspirants with percentages above 95 have already registered with the distance learning school — attracting students from across the country, mainly Uttar Pradesh and NCR, whose registration had begun on July 15 to be on till August 31.
The trend is an outcome of the interest of students in careers like UPSC and Chartered Accountancy, according to university watchers.
“Many students with 100 per cent and above 90 per cent marks have registered with us... Students are attracted to SOl because of the quality and facility provided to them. While they could have easily pursued a course in any colleges the reason they choose to do graduation through distance is the growing interests in careers such as Civil Services, Chartered Accountancy and the choice of wise aspirants to do experiential learning,” Director of the Campus of Open learning, CS Dubey told The Pioneer.
“And SOl has made their journey easy. This is the future of education in the country. We are making audio and video lectures in regular colleges and countries like the US have already drifted to online education. India is following the same steps,” said another DU expert.
Over the years, the SOl has facilitated students with online reading material — free of cost — and updated the syllabus of courses on the lines of the top colleges of the university.
According to last year’s statistics, SOl had 1,43,000 students, out of which 55 to 57 per cent students had above 60 per cent marks while 12,000 students were those with above 80 per cent scores in Class 12.
“It means these students could have occupied the seats of six colleges having both evening and morning batches. These students are wise and intelligent. Besides their focus on careers which need hardcore studying and preparations, they know in a country like ours basic degree is important thus opting.
It gives them the opportunity to do part time skill learning,” added Dubey.
So far, four students with 100 per cent have registered to take admission in BCom (Hons) -New and BA Programme while nine students are with above 95 per cent marks.
While Tanveer Khan, Abhishek, Virat Kohli with 100 per cent marks have registered for BCom (Hons)- New, Shahdab (100 per cent) and Mehtab with 98 per cent have registered for BA Prorgamme. Ankush Mangla and Preerit Goel with 97 per cent have registered for BA (Hons) and BCom respectively. Aakriti Bansal, Shivam, Mehak Gupta Shashank Bansal, Aastha Sinha and Gaurav Goyal have scored 96 per cent in Class 12 and applied across different courses in the SOl for the next academic session.
The SOl was created for those students who could not meet the criteria of the merit list. So far, 4122 students with percentages between 40-59, 3167 students percentages between 60-69, 1885 students with percentages between 70-79, 826 students with percentages between 80-89 and 198 students with percentage above 90 per cent have registered to take admissions at the SOl.
As the registrations are still on, the data collection at the SOl is in progress which indicated that the numbers could go up. The school has no limit of intake of students. Every year, the school enrolls one and a half lakh students while it has around four lakh pursuing degrees at the moment.