This report in The Hindu by S.N. Vijetha talks about the "grand plans" that Delhi University will implement soon. This one in particular appears important:
Another ambitious plan is to convert the existing three-year undergraduate courses in the university into four-year courses in 2013 with some special features. “The entire university's undergraduate courses will be for four-year, with exit options after the second, third and fourth year. A student exiting after two years can earn himself an associate degree, after three a Bachelor's degree depending on the courses and the fourth year will be an honours programme, which will be more research oriented.”
The stuff about the associate degree seems to me to be the first such program in India -- it will be like the credential one earns from a community college in the US. Combined with the flexible program of courses, including the option to study different courses in different partner institutions, sounds like a pretty radical innovation.
A lot would depend on the details of how these programs are implemented, so we will have to wait for sometime before we get a chance to assess how well they are working.
In the meantime, how do faculty or students at DU (and its affiliate colleges) see these initiatives? Any pointers?
4 Comments:
If Prof Dinesh Singh achieves half of what he hopes, it will be huge. As an alumnus of DU, I think it is less dysfunctional than most other universities and there is genuine academic excellence there even today (and even in the colleges). It also has the advantage that a large number of colleges, as well as major university departments, are in one walkable campus. This will make course-sharing easier. One hopes he has been taking the faculty on board in prior discussions.
Allowing students to take courses from DU or Jamia (or JNU/IIT) as they please would require coordination from all sides -- the campuses are pretty far apart. It's hard enough to avoid timing clashes within a single institution...
Good news! Let's hope it works.As Rahul Siddharthan has commented, DU is one of the better universities in the country, so maybe they can make it work.
Delighted to read this. I hope DU succeeds and others will follow.
Here is one by a DU professor in HT:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/editorial-views-on/Opeds/No-course-correction/Article1-851765.aspx
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