With the scrapping of the controversial Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP), the fate of over 3,000 Delhi University students, who had enrolled themselves in BTech and Bachelors in Management Studies (BMS) courses last year, hangs in balance. As these two new courses, along with FYUP, did not get necessary statutory approvals, uncertainty prevails over the status of these courses.
Meanwhile, the Delhi University announced that the admissions process will commence on July 1 with cut-off being expected to be out on Monday night. The second cut-off list will be released on July 4.
While BTech was a completely new course introduced with FYUP in 2013, BMS was offered after combining three existing courses — BA (Honours) in Business Economics (BBE), Bachelor of Business Studies (BBS) and Bachelor of Financial and Investment Analysis (BFIA).
The University Grants Commission (UGC) Standing Committee had recommended in its first meeting that students already under the BTech and BMS programmes must be given the degree as per what they were promised.
A member of the UGC Standing Committee said on the condition of anonymity, “Since the Ordinances under FYUP is no longer stay, BTech naturally will go. However, we have proposed for them (students) to get the degree as per what the university promised them during admission. The university is legally bound to do so.”
The UGC Standing Committee is likely to meet on Monday to deliberate and take a decision on the matter regarding the enrolled BTech and BMS students.
These deliberations will however carry on for the next week. Admission will take place nonetheless with a total of eight cut-off lists being released. Admissions will close on July 22.
EC member Abha Dev Habib further elaborated, “Suggestions have been given to the Standing Committee of UGC for DC-I and BMS students that papers should be redistributed, Applied Courses and Foundation Courses be removed and concentration be put on DC-I and DC-II courses so that they finish 18 papers of DC-I and 6 papers of DC-II by the end of third year and leave with Honours degree. For BTech, it has been suggested that papers be rearranged so that students who wish to save their one year can leave with Honours in Applied Courses in three years after completing 18 papers in DC-I and those who want BTech may continue for fourth year. The University on priority basis should rework the course content as much as possible to make them meaningful BTech degrees. This is necessary as the course neither follows UGC guidelines nor has AICTE approval.”
The new admissions will dissect these courses back to what they were. Instead of BTech Psychological Science, there will be Applied Psychology and instead of BMS, there will be three courses BBE, BBS and BFIA. Thus, students who have already appeared for the BMS entrance examinations will not suffer and be admitted to any of these three courses.
Earlier in the morning, hundreds of students of Delhi University staged a protest outside the HRD Ministry and submitted a representation demanding that the six BTech courses introduced in the last academic session should not be scrapped. The Ministry has assured that students’ interest will be kept in mind and University Grants Commission would be coming out with a statement on this issue. BTech students also staged a protest in North Campus of DU and took a rally from the VC’s residence to his office. Some students tried to enter the VC’s office, but were stopped from doing so by Delhi Police and Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel. The agitating students demanded that their course should not be converted to B Sc.