Admissions to the UG courses at DU

Admissions for the academic session 2011-12 has started today with the declaration of the first cut-offs.The high cut-offs are an outcome of yet another mindless reform causing immense harassment to admission seekers who would have to go through several rounds of admissions and cancellations before securing a seat of their choice. It also shows that the data generated through OMR forms was necessary for arriving at realistic cut offs. It is yet another example of a hurried change in policy without consultation with College Principals and teachers or deliberations in statutory bodies.

The DTF elected Executive and Academic Council members had made a representation to the VC against this move soon after the Admission notification of 19 April 2011.

The University administration, by withdrawing the OMR forms, has wriggled out of its responsibility of processing centralized admission. It sought instead to market its irresponsible action as a student friendly ‘reform’. If the idea was to make the admission process easy for students and parents, the DU Administration should have made the process online.

The DU administration has failed in providing adequate infrastructure in colleges to cope with OBC expansion. High cut offs is seen by colleges as the only option as they face acute shortage of lecture rooms and lab space. At this juncture the problem of over-admission cannot be treated as a triviality. In the absence of data usually provided by the OMR forms, and guided by the news of inflated CBSE results, the colleges have declared high cut offs.The ‘New Admission Policy’ which was marketed as a reform may turn out to be a nightmare for the students and parents.

The Admission Notification of 19 April 2011 also contained a Clause that reads as follows:

The prospectus of the college should clearly state that all undergraduate degree courses shall be taught in semester mode in the academic session 2011-12.

The DTF takes serious note of this clause which is a serious infringement on the rights of decision making statutory bodies. Not only is this clause misleading admission seeking students, it is also in violation of the Act of the University as these courses are yet to be notified as per the Ordinances.

A clause like (10) is tantamount to an irresponsible action that seeks to thrust on students curricula and syllabi which neither they nor the teachers who are to teach know about. That the administration and the Government do not care about the future of students is evident in this hasty imposition of ill-prepared courses. In violation of the Act, the syllabi and structure of the courses, which were passed in a hasty manner in the AC and EC meetings of 25 April 2011, are being tampered everyday leaving teachers clueless of the workload and teaching responsibilities for the new academic session. The clarity about the concurrent courses is completely missing.

Further, we wish to highlight that as per the Ordinances, the admission is to a course. Till date the University has not notified semester syllabi and structure for the Honours Courses of the Departments under the Faculty Social Sciences and Departments of English and GRS . The semester based courses have not been ratified by the Statutory Bodies including Academic Council and Executive Council.

The DU Vice Chancellor should respond to this in a responsible manner and withdraw clause 10 of the Admission Notification. The admission to these courses has to be treated as admission to the existing annual courses as they are the only permissible courses as per the Ordinances.