After Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi University is also likely to do away with the printing of its prospectus from the upcoming academic session in a bid to save trees, as well as cut costs. The varsity, which enrolls 54,000 students every year in the various undergraduate courses being offered at over 75 colleges, sells over 2.5 lakh prospectuses every year.
A member of the admission committee said that there would be no printing of prospectus and the university would be able to save the printing cost. The prospectus used to be printed at the varsity’s press and cost Rs100. The initiative has already been adopted by Jamia Millia Islamia, which claims that it has saved on printing costs running into lakhs. DU earlier used to sell the prospectus along with the centralised OMR form, but in case of online registrations, the fee was supposed to be paid online. This year, the DU prospectus would be available for download on the varsity’s website.
The colleges also used to sell their separate prospectuses, priced anywhere between Rs100 and Rs250. The official said that the colleges would be free to decide whether they still wanted to continue with the printed prospectuses. “They have been directed to sell them only to those students whom they have enrolled and should not compel the seat aspirants to buy the same,” the official added. While the DU was also contemplating bringing the entire admission process online, concerns have been raised whether there were enough servers in place to cope with the admission traffic. Only the postgraduate admission registrations were so far being done online. For the undergraduate admissions, both online and offline processes were available.
The varsity had appointed a 23-member committee last month comprising the Registrar, Deans of various faculties, Principals of various colleges and its Academic and Executive Council members to look into the process of admissions for the various undergraduate courses for the academic session 2015-16. The committee had earlier decided to bring the entire process online. However, in view of the suggestions received from various stakeholders, it has recommended that both online and offline processes be continued but the duration of the latter be reduced. The committee had submitted its recommendations last week and the V-C would take a final call.