Delhi University VC Prof Dinesh Singh puts the record straight what actually prompted the university to bring in four-year degree system as he spoke to Rahiba R Parveen about the new system
What prompted the university to introduce four-year courseIJ How will it help studentsIJ
I have been thinking about this for a long time. Indian institutions of higher education particularly referring to universities have been out of tune with society and with the needs of the country. Above 60,000 students are admitted every year, it is surprising that 25,000 students drop out in their first years and average drop rate is 20,000 every year.
Among the 35,000 students graduating every year, there is no data on how many get employment. Out of these students, a small faction moves into our post-graduate courses. I have been repeatedly told by many corporate institutions who I tried to bring on campus for recruitments that they don’t find our graduate students suitable for almost any kind of job.
Nobody seems to be caring that these graduates are not getting employed. Companies don’t know which colleges they are from but only their names and dicipline are taken. Many students with good percentage of marks get rejected because of lack of skills. To counter such problems we have planned this new course.
Will the university be able to commence the four-year courses from this academic sessionIJ
Yes of course. All preparations are almost complete. Departments are sending their courses and their observations. Syllabi are being finalised. The university is preparing to finalise the courses, admission policies and likely to present it in the Academic Council for approval between by April 20, 2013.
Can we expect increase in the number of seats with the introduction of new initiativeIJ
There are no changes in the seats but seats have been redistributed on the basis of subjects. There will not be B.Sc or BA programme, all the seats will now be according to discipline but the number of seats will remain same. Colleges are just re-arranging their seats. Otherwise, we are full beyond capacity. There is no option that we expand in any way at this moment we cannot absorb more students.
There were several problems during semestrisation. How will you manage any fiasco if there is anyIJ
like any other programme, it is bound to have some loose ends. We have set up committees for different purposes. These committees have been set up to keep a tab on the long term requirements. Every college, every department and our institutional processes are on desk to take care of such possible crisis.
There have been claims that there was no transparency and no proper consultation was taken by the university before introducing a changeIJ
It is pointless. No Vice-Chancellor in the history of this university has taken consultation, the way I have. We organised an open Academic Congress in September 2012, where all faculty members and other stakeholders were asked to present their views by presenting papers and presentation. Some had different views and discussion took place. There are 126 members in the Academic Council out of which 120 voted in favour of the four-year programme. I met more than 4,000 teachers from departments and colleges in small groups for consultation. There was a student parliament also where we cleared the doubts of our senior students and the response was all in favour of the course.