The University of Delhi is once again going to implement FYUP (a four-year undergraduate programme) from the next academic session (2022-23). After the first attempt failed in 2014, now it has recently received approval from the University’s Academic Council for the new structure.
At the meeting of the University’s Academic Council — which looks after all academic and administrative matters of the university — the implementation of provisions under the new National Education Policy (NEP) and the FYUP which is part of the policy has been made fool-proof for the academic year 2022-23.
About The FYUP
The four-year undergraduate programme has multiple entry and exit options along with a blended (both online and offline) mode of learning and a bank of credits — an academic repository of a student’s credits that they have earned in college. This option under the new programme is also expected to allow students flexibility and will give qualifications based on the number of years they have studied: A certificate for completing one year, a diploma in two, a three-year degree or a four-year undergraduate degree if they complete the course.
Furthermore, under the new rules, the university will provide a choice between a three-year honours course or a four-year honours course, which includes one year of research.
NIC has further notified that in the first three years of the honours programmes, students will have to have to choose another language course as well besides existing courses with one of two languages being an Indian language), as well as Social and Emotional Learning course followed by an Innovation and Entrepreneurship course, co-curricular, and an Ethics and Culture course.
As for Commerce students, they will have to choose one discipline from the humanities or social sciences and study six courses from it over their third and fourth years.
CHECK OUT: ADVANTAGES OF DELHI UNIVERSITY
The duration of the post-graduation course will then depend on the duration of the undergraduate degree.
While the existing MPhil programme will be discarded from 2022-2023, the University is looking at ways to implement both one year and two-year Post-Graduate programmes. The structure is changing as higher education is changing in the current environment. Earlier, language was not compulsory for the commerce and science courses but now language will be important for everyone.
Delhi University officials say in the new course structure, BA programme, B Com programme and B Sc (General) courses shall be discontinued. There will be credit scores for every course and in the case of all the courses will have similar credit scores. For the first three years, the credit score points would be 148 for all the courses, earlier for BA (Pass), B Com (Pass) and B Sc (General) course the credit points used to be 132, which made them a lesser course than the Honours. In the new programme, students shall be able to pursue three-year honours or four-year honours in a discipline or four-year honours in a discipline with Research.
Dr Vikas Gupta, the registrar of the university, said, “The four-year undergraduate programme has been approved by the Academic Council with the suggestion that reshuffling of papers will be allowed with prior permission.” This means that students will be allowed to choose the papers that they want to study for their course.
“Lateral entry of students will also be permitted — that is if after studying in DU for some time, if a student wants to shift to another institution they can do so. However, in order to accept such entries to DU, an assessment of seats and infrastructure available will be done and entrance exams will be conducted,” Gupta added.
DU’s new FYUP won’t be like failed 2013 attempt, will be student-centric, says acting Vice-Chancellor, P.C Joshi.
CHECK OUT: The resumption of offline classes will be discussed at JNU, DU, and Jamia.
Objections by the Professors
Earlier when DU had introduced the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) in 2014. It was scrapped by the government after massive protests by students and teachers the same year when Professor Dinesh Singh was the vice-chancellor but the programme was junked a year later by the Smriti Irani-led Ministry of Human Resource Development (now Ministry of Education).
This time around the objections regarding the FYUP has started earlier; Delhi University staff opposes several FYUP provisions.
Rajesh Jha, a professor in DU, said, “With the four-year programme, students will easily give up. The blended mode of learning means 40 per cent of coursework will be covered through online learning and the pandemic has made a case in point that digital learning is not accessible for all.”
Professors also claimed that several provisions of the NEP were not openly discussed with them, and fear that it puts their jobs at risk since the number of students will fluctuate annually.
In September 2020, a 42-member committee was formed to look into the implementation of the NEP at Delhi University. This committee, comprising principals, teachers and professors, was headed by Professor Vivek Suneja, dean of the Faculty of Management Studies.
