A window of hope

Amidst the heavy rush of students at admission centres (Faculty of Arts, Miranda House and Kirorimal College) there is another place in North Campus, experiencing a similar flood of students.

Since the very first day, a large number of students - both from far flung areas as well City-based, have been hovering around the School of Open Learning (SOL) counter windows to submit forms. This institute keeps them away from the race of admission through high percentage cut-offs yet assures them a Delhi University ‘degree’.

This institute, affliated to DU opens an alternate way to pursue undergraduate and postgraduate studies through correspondence. It means you don’t have to go through classroom sessions to understand the course. Instead, some course material provided by the institute  helps you to appear for the final exams.

“I don’t think there is anything different between the degrees handed out by DU to the regular students or correspondence students,” says Rashmi, a resident of Narela. “I have got 65 percent in my boards and I can get admission in a regular course but don’t want to spend my time, energy and money there. I am happy with the correspondence course,” says Rashmi.

According to Vineet, who was accompanying Rashmi, SOL is like a saviour for students who have begin earning at the early age and cannot take up graduation formally. “I have applied for B.Com now, because I started working in 2011. So, I didn’t get time to complete my basic studies. Vineet, who has pursued a graphics design course states that, “The best part of SOL is that FYUP is not imposed on it.”
 
About 77 regular colleges together offer around 54,000 seats but SOL has about 1,50,000 students intake on an average annually. This is another factor attracting students from other states. “There are ample seats in SOL which do not deprive a student of a getting a degree despite poor percentage,” says Rajeev Kumar, who belongs to Ballia, Uttar Pradesh and has got only 43 percent in XII.

Like many other students who apply for SOL and simultaneously enrol in a professional course, Rajeev too wants two degrees. “I will do a technical course from an engineering college and at the same time get a DU degree in BA Pass Course.”

Generally, students of SOL are not considered at par with regular students. If some are forced to take admission owing to their poor socio-economic status or bad scores, students from SOL are looked upon with a different mindset.

“I don’t understand why that is so. Why are students judged on the basis of their marks? You cannot define a student’s calibre through his marks,” says the School director HC Pokhriyal. “I believe SOL is window of hope for those who badly want admission in DU but could not get good marks to cut to any University’s college. Till now we have sold more than 50,000 thousand forms and atleast 2000 students have already taken admission,” says Pokhriyal who believes SOL is the future of education in our country.