The Delhi University has decided to give a free hand to its colleges in setting admission criteria for vacant seats after the “fifth” cut-off list, which would be the final merit list issued by the university this academic session.
In a meeting of the Admission Committee last week, Vice Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi gave his nod to it.
Principals of various colleges had proposed that colleges should be allowed to deal with it after the first five lists. Earlier DU used to issue more than 12 cut-off lists, until all the vacant seats across its 70 colleges were filled.
“The university has taken the decision that in the upcoming admission season, it would issue only five cut-off lists for filling up the seats across the colleges. This decision has been taken considering the concerns over the lengthy admission process... so that the classes are started on time, otherwise the merit lists would keep on coming and colleges would have to wait for the Registrar’s office to set the merit,” Nachiketa Singh, Associate Professor of SGBT Khalsa College and member of the DU Admission Committee told The Pioneer.
“This way, the colleges would be able to decide a merit for the vacant seats easily and go on filling them up. This idea was proposed by principals of some colleges and got an approval in the meeting,” he added.
The DU cut-offs are set at the staggering 100 per cent in some sought-after courses of the top colleges like Sri Ram College of Commerce, St Stephen’s College, and Hindu College. The number of students with that percentage rush to grab seats while the students with lower percentages wait for the next cut-off list with a hope to see a dip in the merit percentages.
As the seats get filled, the colleges keep closing admission to the courses and the university issues the cut-off list until seats of all the courses are filled, marking an end to the admission process of the university.
This entire process goes on for around three months. However, now the university would allow colleges to invite applications on their own — for vacant seats — after the fifth cut-off list.
“For the general category, seats usually get filled in most of the courses, especially the sought-after courses, in the first three lists. By sixth and seventh list, seats for SC/ST are mostly booked and then lists are followed for filling up of the OBC category. Colleges also struggled to fill the seats for less famous courses like Sanskrit and Bengali…after the university stop issuing lists, in some cases colleges fill these seats by their own merit criteria,” explained Abha Dev Habib, the Associate Professor of Physics at Miranda House.
Habib, who is a member of Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) also expressed concerns on “maintaining of transparency” during the admission process.
“We will have to do it very carefully. The remaining seats should not be left vacant. University must form some uniform mechanism for all colleges to set the merit in filling these seats,” she added.
An official of the university assured that there would be complete transparency as the details of “every admission” would be available on college website.