As members of a College Academic Planning Committee we were responsible for charting out the devolution of the four year plan in its second year. The number of roadblocks we encountered must be put down in order to draw attention to the utterly student unfriendly educational program that the University Administration has brazenly conjured up.
Some known facts; the much touted Discipline I courses across the university have been diluted and mutilated. Mindless foundation courses , compulsory in nature, with no seeming direction have been cobbled for students. The same goes for the more ambitious application courses, where student attendance and participation has been minimized in its entirety.
Sitting with five students to hear their presentation in a makeshift classroom , a teacher of foundation or Application courses can easily feel akin to a tattoo artist or some such skilled technician. The rest of the class don't want to hear their batch mates because they have other presentations to make and assignments to submit. The VC's grandiloquent statements on the irrelevance of classroom teaching have borne fruit through the ghastly courses that have been put in place.
The course content is so gossamer and the learning so slight that students feel they might as well as do other things with their time. Handing out excellence awards for innovative teaching of these courses is not going to improve them. After discrediting serious academics and deriding classroom teaching as pedagogically flawed methodology, the university administration has set out to ensure that students are academically damned from their third semester altogether.
Take for instance 125 students opting for Commerce as Discipline I. all of whom opt for economics as Discipline II in their third semester , which is when Discipline II courses are scheduled. If other students in college also ask for economics which is a popular subject, the numbers can easily go up to 240 students. In this scenario, what can individual departments do? The Economics Department will have to run five sections. while other Departments will fall by the wayside as demand and supply chains meet.
Alarmed at this possibility, the Specially Empowered Group at DU handed every Principal a magic wand. " Go forth," they commanded, " Subject Options and availability are the prerogative of the college, and students will have the choice of complying with allotted courses."
So with a wave of the magic wand student option forms were created. Complementing the spirit of compulsory foundation courses, students were asked to fill up five Discipline II options. in order of preference.
These were to be calibrated and then based on a merit list, some students would get their subject of choice, others would be miserable, but possibly no department would die out because down to the last unwilling student, each department would have the required minimum.
While this will all be mathematically worked out, students need to pay attention to the charade that is being staged before their very eyes. They need to understand that no real choice has been made available to them at all.
Earlier commerce graduates studied Economics as an integral part of their Honours course, FYUP has cheated them by making economics optional for them and by actually presenting Discipline II as rare white goods that they have to stand for in lines since Economics will perforce be rationed to them
The possibility of being a commerce graduate in four years with edited knowledge of Commerce and none whatsoever of economics is very real. This is a pathetic prognosis for a program that promised "hands-on experience." The hands in question seem to be bent upon wringing student futures.
Imagine the state of the student who does not get the Discipline II Course she\he opted for in the first place. They are for no fault of their own in a course they do not want possibly for the second time.
So by a clever sleight of the hand and the wielding of the whip DU Administration continues to deny students the right to choose the diluted courses they have set in motion, even in their second year at the university. This is very bad for student morale and remains a poor incentive to learning.
Bleaker truths will continue to unfold for the poor FYUP ""guinea pigs". I mean no insult by this expression. This term was coined to describe freshmen\women by none other than the FYUP VC.
They were promised options of two Discipline II Courses. This cannot happen since Discipline II courses have been graded semester wise with ascending levels of specialization.
Especially in the sciences a student studying the first three units of one Discipline II course in semester 3 4 and 5 and the last three units of another Discipline II Course in semester 6, 7 and 8 will be subject to a lopsided learning process. The shortage of rooms and teaching staff will ensure in all cases that no parallel classes can be run.
Those who will exit after semester four and semester six remain of little significance because according to DU administration these were after all exit routes created to facilitate dropouts. We shall encounter many muddled research paper writers in the 7th and 8th semesters
Some known facts; the much touted Discipline I courses across the university have been diluted and mutilated. Mindless foundation courses , compulsory in nature, with no seeming direction have been cobbled for students. The same goes for the more ambitious application courses, where student attendance and participation has been minimized in its entirety.
Sitting with five students to hear their presentation in a makeshift classroom , a teacher of foundation or Application courses can easily feel akin to a tattoo artist or some such skilled technician. The rest of the class don't want to hear their batch mates because they have other presentations to make and assignments to submit. The VC's grandiloquent statements on the irrelevance of classroom teaching have borne fruit through the ghastly courses that have been put in place.
The course content is so gossamer and the learning so slight that students feel they might as well as do other things with their time. Handing out excellence awards for innovative teaching of these courses is not going to improve them. After discrediting serious academics and deriding classroom teaching as pedagogically flawed methodology, the university administration has set out to ensure that students are academically damned from their third semester altogether.
Take for instance 125 students opting for Commerce as Discipline I. all of whom opt for economics as Discipline II in their third semester , which is when Discipline II courses are scheduled. If other students in college also ask for economics which is a popular subject, the numbers can easily go up to 240 students. In this scenario, what can individual departments do? The Economics Department will have to run five sections. while other Departments will fall by the wayside as demand and supply chains meet.
Alarmed at this possibility, the Specially Empowered Group at DU handed every Principal a magic wand. " Go forth," they commanded, " Subject Options and availability are the prerogative of the college, and students will have the choice of complying with allotted courses."
So with a wave of the magic wand student option forms were created. Complementing the spirit of compulsory foundation courses, students were asked to fill up five Discipline II options. in order of preference.
These were to be calibrated and then based on a merit list, some students would get their subject of choice, others would be miserable, but possibly no department would die out because down to the last unwilling student, each department would have the required minimum.
While this will all be mathematically worked out, students need to pay attention to the charade that is being staged before their very eyes. They need to understand that no real choice has been made available to them at all.
Earlier commerce graduates studied Economics as an integral part of their Honours course, FYUP has cheated them by making economics optional for them and by actually presenting Discipline II as rare white goods that they have to stand for in lines since Economics will perforce be rationed to them
The possibility of being a commerce graduate in four years with edited knowledge of Commerce and none whatsoever of economics is very real. This is a pathetic prognosis for a program that promised "hands-on experience." The hands in question seem to be bent upon wringing student futures.
Imagine the state of the student who does not get the Discipline II Course she\he opted for in the first place. They are for no fault of their own in a course they do not want possibly for the second time.
So by a clever sleight of the hand and the wielding of the whip DU Administration continues to deny students the right to choose the diluted courses they have set in motion, even in their second year at the university. This is very bad for student morale and remains a poor incentive to learning.
Bleaker truths will continue to unfold for the poor FYUP ""guinea pigs". I mean no insult by this expression. This term was coined to describe freshmen\women by none other than the FYUP VC.
They were promised options of two Discipline II Courses. This cannot happen since Discipline II courses have been graded semester wise with ascending levels of specialization.
Especially in the sciences a student studying the first three units of one Discipline II course in semester 3 4 and 5 and the last three units of another Discipline II Course in semester 6, 7 and 8 will be subject to a lopsided learning process. The shortage of rooms and teaching staff will ensure in all cases that no parallel classes can be run.
Those who will exit after semester four and semester six remain of little significance because according to DU administration these were after all exit routes created to facilitate dropouts. We shall encounter many muddled research paper writers in the 7th and 8th semesters
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