JOIN USWith Delhi University getting serious about rolling out the Choice Based Credit System, a university teachers’ group in its letter to vice chancellor Dinesh Singh is calling the contentious programme a “Make in UGC” scheme of the government.
But Jamia Millia Islamia is saying that there are not many dissenting voices in opposition to the CBCS on its campus.
Academics for Action and Development (AAD) in DU argues that by proposing CBCS, the University Grants Commission is compromising with the autonomy of the university. The AAD letter slams the university for succumbing to government pressure.It says the Joint Registrar has written to the faculties and departments to adopt new syllabi in an “abject surrender to the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development”.
“The UGC (University Grants Commission) document itself highlights that the CBCS is going to reduce the workload drastically. A closer scrutiny also indicates that it will make workload highly fluctuating,” says the group, which represents a large group of ad hoc teachers in the university.
The group also claimed that fluctuating workload will encourage recruitment of contractual teachers.
AAD said that bringing CBCS as “reporting item in the Academic Council and implementing it without discussion is a betrayal of the statutory privileges of the university”.
Other teachers’ groups have also been alleging that the varsity cleared the programme without seriously debating its merits.
On the contrary, Jamia Millia Islamia is saying that the Vice Chancellor Talat Ahmad’s proposal of implementing CBCS found ‘resounding’ support from the members of Majlis-i-Talimi (Academic Council).
“It was not an agenda item in the AC’s meet. The VC made the proposal of implementing CBCS and asked HODs (heads of departments) and directors of different centres to prepare a timeline for its effective implementation,” Jamia media coordinator Mukesh Ranjan said. While many Jamia teachers are seeing merit in CBCS, but the DU teacher are hoping for another rollback. The teachers’ groups had last year pressurised the UGC into demanding scrapping of the four-year undergraduate programme, introduced as an attempt at academic reforms.