Four Year Undergraduate Programme: In Whose Interest Is It All?

Join Teachers, Educationists, Students and Parents in a

Public Hearing 30 May 2013, Arts Faculty, North Campus, DU, 11 a.m. onward
Dear students and friends, At the current moment, Delhi University is caught in a tremendous crisis. On the one hand, the DU administration is hurriedly forcing through the Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP). On the other hand, students, teachers, intellectuals and all those concerned with education are opposing it. The DU administration has declared that all students taking admission in DU will enter a four year honours degree. Within this FYUP scheme, if students wish they can leave at the end of two years with a Diploma or at the end of three with a Bachelor degree (without honours). It is only at the end of four years that they can leave with a Bachelor (Hons) degree. The Vice Chancellor states that the new programme allows for greater flexibility, and will generate greater employability; but this is quite far from the truth. To understand the new scheme better, let us look at what will be taught under FYUP. Number of Courses under each area Diploma and degree Two Year Diploma Three Year Bachelor degree Four Year Bachelor (Hons) degree Foundation Courses (compulsory commonsensical courses) 11 11 11 Discipline I (Core subject / major) Discipline II (Second subject / minor) Applied Courses Integrated Mind, Body Heart / Cultural Activities Courses 04 06 08

08 14 20

02 04 06

03 05 05

Will the FYUP, with the above course content and its multiple exit options truly make students more employable? Will it help them get better jobs or give them extra advantage in choosing future academic options? Let us look at some of the facts: (1) The students who obtain a Two Year Diploma will study only 8 papers from their core/ main discipline. The remaining 20 courses will be compulsory, extremely basic, mostly school-level (the foundation courses). Such a two-year diploma would offer no specialization since the student will have studied only 8 papers from the core discipline. Would such a DU Diploma have any value in the job market when contrasted with specialized diplomas (such as NIIT diplomas in computer languages and programming)? No, because the DU diploma offers no focus on a core discipline at all unlike diplomas offered elsewhere. So, in contrast to the claims of providing more employment, a diploma -holder from DU will actually be at a disadvantage when compared to a specialised diploma holder from another institute. (2) If the student chooses to complete the three year Bachelor degree, s/he will merely study 14 main discipline courses. The remaining 28 courses will be an wild assortment of applied courses, subsidiary courses,cultural activities,and school-level foundation courses. We know, that from the +2 level in school itself, students have already begun to specialize by choosing their streams. What will they gain by repeating in college, the basics of each subject (which they have already been taught in school up to class 10)? Further, when compared with students from other universities who acquire an Honours

degree in the same number of years; how will they stand a chance, let alone an edge in the job market? It is also obvious that when compared to the old three year programme course, they will not get a comparable amount of knowledge in their core discipline. While students under the old three year programme could enter a Masters programme in any of their core subjects, how will the DU students with inadequate specialization be able to pursue a Masters without completing their fourth year? (3) The student who completes all four years and obtains a Bachelor (Hons) degree will have to do 50 courses of which only 20 will be from his/her core discipline. The remaining 30 courses will be applied courses, cultural activities, subsidiary courses and school-level foundation courses. In spite of having spent both time and money on an extra year, these students will have less knowledge of their core discipline than earlier students who had acquired an Honours Degree in three years. Not only are they spending an extra year with no evident academic advantage, it is also not clear what job opportunities will open up exclusively for them. Subsequently, if a student wishes to do an MA, DU has decided (although the decision has not yet been implemented) to let them do a one-year MA on the basis of credit transfers of the 4th year of FYUP. The real issue of concern here is, even if the DU Administration recognises credit equivalence between the 4th year of Bachelor (Hons) and the 1st year of MA, we need to ask whether such technical credit point equivalence from the undergraduate programme can actually be the substitute of the quality of Post Graduate class room teaching and learning that a student will acquire in course of a 2 years full-fledged Masters programme? Another concern is, if the student has to pursue an MA from another university, s/he will still have to study for full two years in MA, because the UGC does not have any system of equivalence in place to suit the specificity of FYUP students. Thus on all counts, the claims that FYUP will bring greater academic rigour, flexibility and employment, do not have any credible basis. DUs Vice-Chancellor claims that a currently, a large part of the student body drops out without finishing their education and getting their degree. In the proposed FYUP, students have the option to exit at the end of two and three years, with a Diploma and a Bachelor degree. However, what the VC is hiding is the danger that soon the job-market may treat the 2year/ 3year certificates coming out of a 4 year programme as drop out degrees. Isnt it a real possibility that the students, who have chosen to exit at two and three years, be seen in the job-market as those who were unable to or did not possess the competence to complete the Four Year Programme? In the name of employability and quality, this method of providing Multiple Exit Points is just another way of institutionalising drop-outs. No student will actually be better off even in the job market from these multiple exit points. On the contrary, in a situation where a common student has to spend annually Rs. 1-1.5 lakh annually to fend for college fees and other living costs of rent, food and transport, 4 year will place the increased financial burden for the additional year. Needless to say, this will further discourage the students who are already economically and socially disadvantaged (particularly the SC/ST/ OBC/PH/Minorities/Women students) to carry on with the Honours programme and force them to settle for the drop-out degrees. Erosion of Teaching-Learning 1) Training in Academic Writing: Under the previous three year programme, all students had to write three assignments and one project per paper, allowing them to develop greater analytical and research skills. In the new FYUP, students will not be required to submit even one written assignment; instead, they will have one group class presentation per course. In such a situation, how is any student going to be able to develop abilities in analysis or research? 2) The total number of teaching weeks have been reduced from 16 to 14. Where in the old system, per unit there would be 2 classes a week as well as tutorials, in the new scheme there will be only 1 class per unit per week. Further, so much teaching time will now be wasted in the fruitless compu lsory foundation courses which could have been better spent on the core discipline. How can any student specialise in any discipline if s/he spends more time on unwanted compulsory courses rather than necessary main courses? Until now, Delhi University was known throughout the country for its rigorous, affordable, and highquality education. The FYUP which will replace DUs earlier programmes is entirely lacking in academic quality and rigour, and unsuitable for employment and further studies as well. Recently,

DU has been conducting Open House sessions for new entrants: but student and parents have all seen the administrations total refusal to answer any questions on the FYUP . The administration has gone so far as to say there are other universities in the city please join them. At a moment when students have so many doubts and queries the DU administration is not answering them, because it has no answers. We must all recognise that education is not commodity like a T.V. or a refrigerator. A bad consumer good may cause some monetary loss but still it can be replaced. We cannot replace a bad education acquired by spending years and money - it becomes an irreplaceable burden which cannot be compensated for! Friends, universities in a developing country like ours are duty-bound to educate students with due rigor, enhance their critical thinking ability and also help erase the various social and economic inequities that exist in our society. The FYUP fails on all these counts. Instead, it seeks to dismantle a premier university and reframes its programmes to reinforce existing social and economic divisions by depriving students of their educational rights for better jobs and academic future. That a publicly funded, central university is being permitted to be so irresponsible is both deeply saddening and shameful. Deeply alarmed at the content and structure of the FYUP and the roughshod manner it is being implemented, several noted academics, writers and intellectuals publicly expressed their concern. Five eminent scholars - scientist Yash Pal, historian Romila Thapar, author U R Ananthamurthy, poet and former chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi Ashok Vajpeyi and critic Namvar Singh has made a powerful appeal to the government and President of India, who is also the Visitor of the Delhi University: We are distressed to hear that despite protests by senior scholars and public intellectuals, the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) and the UGC have decided to maintain distance from the conflict afflicting in DU... In our view, this decision is tantamount to abdication of responsibility. Autonomy does not give licence to any institution, let alone a university, to treat the education of young people in a cavalier fashion... The four-year course that DU is determined to implement goes beyond the National Policy on Education (1986) as it violates the 10+2+3 structure mandated by the policy. DU cannot be allowed to proceed with its new course without revision of the national policy and adequate discussion that such a revision would require.. They urged the govt to intervene and save the lives of lakhs of young men and women from being manipulated through an ill-conceived educational experiment. (TOI, May 25) We ask all citizens concerned about education, equality and democracy to seriously consider what purpose will be served by the disastrous anti-student, anti-academic reforms initiated under the FYUP in Delhi University. Our University, Our Future! Affordable education! Quality! Social Inclusion! Equality! LDTF (Left Democratic Teachers Forum) Contact: 9868034224, 9868337493 AISA (All India Students' Association) Contact: 9213974505, 9013219020