DU teachers flag concerns over fourth year research component under UGCF 2022
Delhi University (DU) teachers affiliated to the Democratic Teachers’ Front (DTF) wrote a letter to the vice chancellor on Wednesday, raising concerns regarding the research component that had been introduced in the fourth year of undergraduate programmes under the revised Undergraduate Curriculum Framework (UGCF) 2022.
This comes after a recent university notification, dated January 22, regarding the “approved rates of remuneration for evaluation-related activities.”
The notification mentioned that a remuneration of Rs 1,500 shall be paid to the teachers for evaluation of the projects in the final semester of the UG courses.
Calling the DU notification an “unacademic approach to the research component”, DTF further said in its letter that while the Semester VIII evaluation keeps extremely steep and unrealistic goals for students in the form of Scopus publications, books, book chapters, patents or presentations at recognised national or international conferences, the university is falling short in recognising what it takes to conduct academic research.
While the concerns raised by DTF are not new and have been spoken about by faculty members repeatedly since the start of the first batch of UG fourth years in 2025 under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, a fresh wave of concerns has been highlighted in the letter regarding how overburdened students have become with “unrealistic heavy-duty papers along with UG research”.
“Students are finding themselves in a bind as they find themselves at the same crossroad as they were after completing 3 years of the UGCF. The 4th year as such does not guarantee them next-level mobility.
“The crossroads for students of the 4th year remain the same as those for 3rd-year students,” the letter says, adding problems like lack of time available to students for self-study and library work, student-teacher ratio, current teaching and administrative workload of teachers and infrastructure requirements which remain unmet.
Among the concerns raised regarding the evaluation process, DTF said that a previous notification dated January 8 had asked colleges to appoint one expert per eight to ten students, which is academically unviable. “Furthermore, remuneration for experts is to be provided for their input on a batch of 15 students, which is irrational. Also, the notification is silent about any remuneration for the VII semester evaluation, which is also for 240 marks.”
