( also published at http://www.governancenow.com/news/public-reporter/du-s-4-yr-undergrad-programme-recipe-disaster )
The semesterisation could not achieve
what was claimed by its implementer. The earlier vice-chancellor compromised
all the features (like interdisciplinary approach, lesser burdening of students
and allowing in-depth understanding of subjects etc.) in order to achieve
semesterisation. As warned, the examination structure almost collapsed
initially and that resulted in unreasonable distribution of marks. This invited
students’ plea for transparency and reevaluation that was further crushed with
a hike in reevaluation fees and implementation of another flawed approach of
getting three examiners to check a single paper. And now we all know that after
being unable to tackle the pressure of bi-annual semester system, the university
examination wing is compelled to pass this unmanageable burden on to the
college administration. The University authorities now seem to have admitted their
failure in achieving the aims of semesterisation but only in misusing this to
justify the timing for ‘their’ another proposal of Four-Year-Undergraduate-Program
when the first batch of semester-graduates is yet to exit the colleges.
Unfortunately the only lesson that
the University seems to have learnt from its recent experiment with students’
future is that they now know that the administration can implement their ideas ignoring
all reasoned oppositions. The failure of teachers’ movement in opposing the
semesterisation process has created two-fold problems. One, that teachers are
now apprehensive in taking another such reasoned stand that led to a system
that is completely non-responsive and secondly the University authorities have
got unreasonably emboldened. Now there is no one who bothers to answer you and
that has led to a situation where nobody is willing to ask ‘unnoticed’ questions.
Whereas the semesterisation was a bundle
of mere cosmetic changes that boiled down to accepting a bi-annual examination
program, this time the proposed structure is set to remodel our vision and
understanding on the aims and objectives of our education system. It seems to
have set to produce a generation of unskilled youth-power only fit to become
salesperson and ready to get exploited in the new consumerism world. Only with
this vision one can approve dilution of disciplinary subjects, wastage of one
year without any value addition, disorienting a student that was oriented
towards a particular discipline of choice during their school studies and
introduction of eleven pre-elementary level ‘non-focused’ foundation courses.
And all these are being made to swallow by a system whose infrastructure is yet
to soak the impact of the sudden expansion due to the OBC reservation policy and the after-effects of an ill-prepared semester program and have started showing cracks due to the presence of an unreasonably large
number of temporary-adhoc teaching and non-teaching staff members.
Do we have no option but to listen to
the tickles of the time-bomb and wait for its explosion at the time of
admission that is set to devastate the University leaving it probably unable to
reconstruct itself in a near future? University authorities seem to have time neither to listen to these apprehensions, nor dispel them and nor are they
prepared to give us time to plug the loopholes to defuse the time-bomb.
What we need is at least one more
year to assess the implications of the new program and make suitable
corrections before experimenting with students’ future again.
