This morning's newspaper brings in some more information about plans to decimate Delhi University further. A few days ago, there was an announcement that an entrance examination for students aspiring to study at Delhi University would now be outsourced. The amazing thing about such information is that it comes into our drawing rooms via the newspaper. Our Vice Chancellor has taken a vow of silence which he breaks only to grace occasional events like Departmental Seminars when National participation is the stake. He arrives at these seminars , speaks to a room full of strangers, some real and the rest intentional and drifts away, presumably to his Vice-Regal Cave.
Truth be told, were any of us to run into him anywhere in the city, it is unlikely that we would recognize him. Anonymity by itself is not a bad thing. Our previous VC, for example, loved being feted in visual media, rode elephants to annoy a lot of us while alienating all of us from the university processes altogether. Our current VC is neither seen or heard. This kind of self-effacement is wonderful for a meditative and mystical life, where one is developing an inner calm, but as is now evident to almost everybody, very insidious and damaging to the interests of a Premier University. Following the example set by our premier, the current VC of Delhi University has steadfastly refused to communicate or address any of the problems that have been foisted upon and continue to plague Delhi University for well over a decade.
CBCS or the Credit based Choice System was introduced as part of an ambitious, unplanned and never discussed before Four Year University Program and was thrust upon the university already reeling under a forcibly introduced semester system. The FYUP, the Congress's unsought gift to the University, was disbanded in 2014 alongside huge student -teacher protests and a change in Government. Ironically, although FYUP was replaced by a TYUP, CBCS which should be actually called Coercive, Banal and Constrictive Study was grafted on to the new syllabus. The problem with CBCS is not that it is a bad idea, but that it has never been implemented with student interests and freedom in mind, nor was it the result of collective thinking and planning by teachers.
Currently, CBCS continues to flounder because, the University is yet to release the second tranche of teaching posts that were a mandated part of college rolls after the introduction of OBC reservation for students. Due to the crunch in teaching staff, most colleges cannot provide options and are constrained to teach only the minimum courses required. In case an option is provided, the Department that is teaching it comes under severe strain.. Firstly this requires a lot of hand wrestling between college administration and Teachers-in-Charge of individual departments. Also, no permanent appointments have been made for a very long time. Departments, we must remember can only be built on the collective expertise of teachers.Teaching new courses requires a teacher with steady employment who is given an opportunity to learn and grow with her job. In most colleges, ad hoc appointments are often renewed upon administrative whim . So this is a terrible no win situation in which all of us , teachers, students, administration and courses continue to lose steadily. If there is a greater game plan, I confess my inability to see it or understand it.
Today's paper informs that a proposal is afoot to provide students more flexibility, allowing them the option of studying different CBCS courses at different universities. This plan is even more dazzling than the one proposed by our former VC( DS) who wanted colleges to offer only one specific CBCS course thereby enabling students to move between colleges, doing one option at one college and the next option at another. Arguments for shifting students from one university to another comes from a incorrect sense of empowered mobility. However, the reality is very stark, because physical mobility on the part of students is not really a marker of a student's academic development or intellectual growth. Serious reflection and re-examination of all these lop-sided top down schemes being crammed down the throats of hapless university communities, is therefore necessary.
Universities and colleges are not in the info-tainment business, nor are they meant to be. A teaching calendar of almost thirty lectures per unit in the annual mode has been whittled down to twelve lectures per unit in the semester mode. Learning and teaching cannot be sustained by reducing interactive processes and further dilution by clamping down on teaching posts, shrinking infrastructure and making both the teacher and teaching optional to the processes of learning.
Things have only got worse in the University. Now, with the whip in place for implementation of fresh reservations, all semblance of optimal student teacher ratios in the university will cease to exist. Colleges are centres of teaching and learning; converting them into cafeterias and cinema halls that will be filled with students in short term transit cannot aid the cause of learning , academic rigor or university life.
Already, our best teaching and learning time has become a casualty to the semester system and in the worst months of the year, namely, bitterly cold December and brutally hot May students have been unthinkingly made to take examinations. (and no, I do not think air conditioning and central heating are options we should be looking for anytime) . Evaluation of exam scripts and setting of examination papers twice a year has enormous costs, in time, money, energy and quality. The bar on all fronts has been set abysmally low, and the farming out of AECC answer scripts for evaluation at individual colleges, allowing further leeway to dubious internal assessment mechanisms, damage altogether the idea of an impartial system of evaluation.
Given Delhi's terrible air, extreme weather, awful traffic, and congestion on the roads and within institutions, this would be a good time for the movers and shakers to consider shutting down all colleges and shifting everyone to a cyber university. All teaching can be done online through bots and students can enroll into courses of their choice, with unlimited options.
Colleges reeling under shortages of water, electricity, classrooms and staff ( both teaching and non teaching) can be turned into visual sites that will provide "an idea of the University" to all visitors. A moderate fee to experience university life can be charged from all visitors who can have a choice of simulated experiences ranging from classroom lectures, tutorial and practical experiences, library visits, guided walks within the campus and special canteen fare, et al. Under the prevailing circumstances, this would be a democratic way of ensuring access to university experience for one and all. I am confident that this pilot project can be put in place by 2020. We wont need to agonize over student-teacher-infrastucture-ratios or the idea of the university ever again.
Truth be told, were any of us to run into him anywhere in the city, it is unlikely that we would recognize him. Anonymity by itself is not a bad thing. Our previous VC, for example, loved being feted in visual media, rode elephants to annoy a lot of us while alienating all of us from the university processes altogether. Our current VC is neither seen or heard. This kind of self-effacement is wonderful for a meditative and mystical life, where one is developing an inner calm, but as is now evident to almost everybody, very insidious and damaging to the interests of a Premier University. Following the example set by our premier, the current VC of Delhi University has steadfastly refused to communicate or address any of the problems that have been foisted upon and continue to plague Delhi University for well over a decade.
CBCS or the Credit based Choice System was introduced as part of an ambitious, unplanned and never discussed before Four Year University Program and was thrust upon the university already reeling under a forcibly introduced semester system. The FYUP, the Congress's unsought gift to the University, was disbanded in 2014 alongside huge student -teacher protests and a change in Government. Ironically, although FYUP was replaced by a TYUP, CBCS which should be actually called Coercive, Banal and Constrictive Study was grafted on to the new syllabus. The problem with CBCS is not that it is a bad idea, but that it has never been implemented with student interests and freedom in mind, nor was it the result of collective thinking and planning by teachers.
Currently, CBCS continues to flounder because, the University is yet to release the second tranche of teaching posts that were a mandated part of college rolls after the introduction of OBC reservation for students. Due to the crunch in teaching staff, most colleges cannot provide options and are constrained to teach only the minimum courses required. In case an option is provided, the Department that is teaching it comes under severe strain.. Firstly this requires a lot of hand wrestling between college administration and Teachers-in-Charge of individual departments. Also, no permanent appointments have been made for a very long time. Departments, we must remember can only be built on the collective expertise of teachers.Teaching new courses requires a teacher with steady employment who is given an opportunity to learn and grow with her job. In most colleges, ad hoc appointments are often renewed upon administrative whim . So this is a terrible no win situation in which all of us , teachers, students, administration and courses continue to lose steadily. If there is a greater game plan, I confess my inability to see it or understand it.
Today's paper informs that a proposal is afoot to provide students more flexibility, allowing them the option of studying different CBCS courses at different universities. This plan is even more dazzling than the one proposed by our former VC( DS) who wanted colleges to offer only one specific CBCS course thereby enabling students to move between colleges, doing one option at one college and the next option at another. Arguments for shifting students from one university to another comes from a incorrect sense of empowered mobility. However, the reality is very stark, because physical mobility on the part of students is not really a marker of a student's academic development or intellectual growth. Serious reflection and re-examination of all these lop-sided top down schemes being crammed down the throats of hapless university communities, is therefore necessary.
Universities and colleges are not in the info-tainment business, nor are they meant to be. A teaching calendar of almost thirty lectures per unit in the annual mode has been whittled down to twelve lectures per unit in the semester mode. Learning and teaching cannot be sustained by reducing interactive processes and further dilution by clamping down on teaching posts, shrinking infrastructure and making both the teacher and teaching optional to the processes of learning.
Things have only got worse in the University. Now, with the whip in place for implementation of fresh reservations, all semblance of optimal student teacher ratios in the university will cease to exist. Colleges are centres of teaching and learning; converting them into cafeterias and cinema halls that will be filled with students in short term transit cannot aid the cause of learning , academic rigor or university life.
Already, our best teaching and learning time has become a casualty to the semester system and in the worst months of the year, namely, bitterly cold December and brutally hot May students have been unthinkingly made to take examinations. (and no, I do not think air conditioning and central heating are options we should be looking for anytime) . Evaluation of exam scripts and setting of examination papers twice a year has enormous costs, in time, money, energy and quality. The bar on all fronts has been set abysmally low, and the farming out of AECC answer scripts for evaluation at individual colleges, allowing further leeway to dubious internal assessment mechanisms, damage altogether the idea of an impartial system of evaluation.
Given Delhi's terrible air, extreme weather, awful traffic, and congestion on the roads and within institutions, this would be a good time for the movers and shakers to consider shutting down all colleges and shifting everyone to a cyber university. All teaching can be done online through bots and students can enroll into courses of their choice, with unlimited options.
Colleges reeling under shortages of water, electricity, classrooms and staff ( both teaching and non teaching) can be turned into visual sites that will provide "an idea of the University" to all visitors. A moderate fee to experience university life can be charged from all visitors who can have a choice of simulated experiences ranging from classroom lectures, tutorial and practical experiences, library visits, guided walks within the campus and special canteen fare, et al. Under the prevailing circumstances, this would be a democratic way of ensuring access to university experience for one and all. I am confident that this pilot project can be put in place by 2020. We wont need to agonize over student-teacher-infrastucture-ratios or the idea of the university ever again.
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