The decision by Delhi University to follow the National Education Policy beginning from 2022-2023 which even prompted the varsity teachers’ union to declare a strike on August 24, 2021 has been made official. The Standing Committee on Academic Matters authorized the policy’s implementation from 2022 to 2023, as well as the four-year undergraduate programme and numerous entry and exit choices for students, during its meeting on Monday.
To investigate the National Education Policy’s implementation, the university created a 42-member high-powered committee. The 42-member committee also suggests that the university’s three-year undergraduate programme should be maintained, but that a four-year degree programme should also be added, as well as one-year and two-year postgraduate programmes be implemented.
While more than half of the committee members came to this decision together, 16 elected members dissented too, claiming that the issue regarding the policy had not been properly debated.
WHAT WAS FINALISED?
The Standing Committee agreed to keep the three-year honours degree courses by incorporating them into the four-year honours degree and four-year honours degree with research. The committee also said that “the quality of the degree granted by the university should not be jeopardized,” and that the existing structure and workload, as well as the inclusion of new courses, should be maintained.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE STUDENTS?
The NEP Implementation Committee (NIC) suggested that the current undergraduate study programs—Honours and Program—be maintained “with terminology and organizational changes.” The university will offer a variety of entry and exit points.
For current honours courses in sciences, arts, and commerce, students can graduate with a certificate after one year, a diploma after two years, honours in the discipline after three years, and honours in the subject with research after four years.
In the first three years of the honours programme, students will be required to complete another language course (one of two languages must be an Indian language), a Social and Emotional Learning course, an Innovation and Entrepreneurship course, co-curriculars, and an Ethics and Culture course, in addition to existing courses.
Whereas the final year students who choose the four-year honours with research option must complete a thesis or an internship. According to the NIC’s recommendations, BSC and BA students will be able to choose one of the two subjects they studied in their first three years and take six courses in that discipline, as well as complete a research dissertation on the Major discipline of study and an inter-disciplinary research dissertation on the Major and Minor disciplines of study in their fourth year.
Students pursuing a degree in commerce will be required to select one field from the humanities or social sciences, take six courses from that discipline throughout their third and fourth years, and write dissertations in that discipline.
CONCLUSION
This policy will be a new and a different framework, and the students will undoubtedly have to adjust to the changes once more.
With the students’ disapproval, numerous professors and other prominent people of the community also oppose and disapprove of it, believing that it is a matter of great significance that should have been given more time to be addressed.
“These are times of the pandemic, where we lost more than 40 teachers. We haven’t even come back to normalcy. What is this mad rush to implement NEP? The NIC submitted its report in February which was made public, but there has to be a formal mechanism to ask for feedback from common teachers. The university should come back to physical mode and there should be consultation with all stakeholders.”
– Mithuraaj Dhusiya, an AC member, while talking to The Indian Express
