"Campaign against CBCS to go on. It violates the Delhi University Act.""CBCS fails in DU. 92 per cent students reject the new system. Disappointed on being used as guinea pigs."
-"Campaign against CBCS to go on. It violates the Delhi University Act.-"-"CBCS fails in DU. 92 per cent students reject the new system. Disappointed on being used as guinea pigs.-"
-"Duta terms CBCS illegal, says standard of education will suffer under such educational reforms.-"Such slogans mushroomed in pamphlets and posters all over the DU colleges in July as the new academic session started.
Fast-forward to October: three months into the session and there is no clarity yet on the choice based credit system. CBCS, as explained by the Univer-sity Grants Commission, is -"cafeteria-approach to education.-" -"CBCS will give students much more freedom to choose what they would like to study,-" explains an university official.
This system, very much like the semester system and the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP), was implemented in the city’s premier varsity without any discussion with the stakeholders — the teachers and the students. It is ironical that a teaching system was imposed without the consent of the teachers and the students. None of the three systems were imposed with any academic debates or discussions over utility, practicality and course content. The teachers have had no say in finalising curriculum taught to thousands of students in the university.
The colleges in Delhi University were told that the CBCS was being implemented as per UGC regulations and had to be implemented without any delay or debate. -"Many of our recommendations on integrated courses, counting of subsidiaries, introduction of interdisciplinary courses, internal assessment, setting up of student-faculty committees were accepted. Howe-ver, the semester system (2010-11), FYUP (2013), and CBCS (2015) were academically retrograde steps that were pushed through without debate, and have adversely affected the qu-ality of teaching and lear-ning,-" says Nandita Narain, president of the Delhi University Teachers’ Association.
Even after almost three months into the course, The Asian Age found that out there has been no effort by the UGC or the university administration to interact with the teachers or HoDs. The DU teachers still do not have a clear idea about the curriculum. Even now most papers in a course do not have a prescribed text. The syllabi for various courses mention -"suggested readings,-" but these are not available in the market.
The most bewildering part is that neither the teachers nor the students know how the evaluation will work and the colleges have not received assessment scheme for the CBCS yet. It is not known whether the students’ attendance will play any role in the final evaluation.
In November, the university will have its semester exams, and assignments, projects and presentations have not been completed as yet due to the lack of proper guidelines.
When asked, the students reveal that they had been briefed by their teachers about the course structure and the new system. However, when the teachers themselves do not know the system properly, what kind of briefing would the students have got
-"We are currently teaching three different courses to all three years: the CBCS, the semester mode and the FYUP. We seem to have made history for all the wrong reasons,-" says a DU professor, who does not wish to be named.
Opponents of the new system call this an -"agenda of profiteering through privatisation,-" and complain that the top-down reforms are being thrust upon the university. As per DU Ordinance XIV-B (6), the syllabus of a department must emanate from the committee of courses of that particular department.
In a letter, dated June 2014, written to the President of India, who is also the Visitor to the Central universities, the Duta, complaining about FYUP, had written, -"The restructuring of the FYUP had to either come from the committees of courses through the respective faculties to the academic council or referred to the committees of courses through the faculties by the academic council before arriving at a considered decision. The proposal was never sent to the faculties or the committees for their consideration.-"
Duta even described the CBCS as -"illegal.-" When asked why, Ms Narain said, -"The CBCS was implemented after admissions had been made under the earlier scheme. In fact at the time of admission, students had even filled up exam forms for the exams to be held in November as per the erstwhile semester scheme. So, the courses to which students were admitted were different from what were imposed on them later in July.-"
Adweta Gaur, a Delhi University student, says, -"Uniformity (in terms of the curriculum) should be maintained across batches for the convenience of students and teachers. Almost all the time we find teachers giving examples and references from other texts for a better understanding of the text being taken in the class. However, this thing is followed by a remark — †Oh! You guys didn’t study that Yes, yes, your syllabus is different. Your seniors did that.’-"
-"Since the four-year undergraduate programme has been scrapped, our number of papers per semester has naturally increased provided that we now have to complete our 4 years of under graduation in 3 years,-" says Adweta.
Courses from the school-level itself are changed because of the whims and fancies of the political parties. Similarly, schemes and systems are implemented in universities. The UPA got four-year undergraduate programme implemented. But the NDA revoked it. Now, the NDA regime has brought CBCS. Once another party comes in power, there might be some new system thrust upon the students and the teachers.
-"Our party is totally against the saffronisation of education system. When the HRD minister isn’t even a graduate how can she decide the future of college students We welcome changes but not at the cost of students career,-" says Arun Hada from NSUI.
Tomorrow: CBCS is standardisation at the cost of quality
