The Vice-Chancellor,
University of Delhi,
Delhi
7th June 2010
Sub: Building of consensus on academic reforms – re.
Sir,
I write this open letter in my personal capacity as a science teacher with a fond hope that it will open not only closed minds but also open a comprehensive debate on the semester issue, an issue which vitally impinges upon the future health of our university system.
It is by now well established that you have blatantly exploited your position as the Vice-Chancellor of the University to illegally implement the semester system at the undergraduate level and to arbitrarily assemble semester based Science Courses. In this process you have violated expressed provisions of the University Act, Statutes, Ordinances, and academically healthy past practices. In your enthusiastic zeal to be the appointed hatchet man of the MHRD / UGC, an enthusiasm which will make even them squirm, you have ignored all statutory processes and bodies. There is no point in enlisting the whole litany of your irregularities since you yourself do not deny having committed them. However, we are concerned that myopic actions of the university authorities have the ominous portents of destroying the teaching-learning process in Delhi University, particularly the Science Courses. We shudder to remember how the ‘visionary dream’ of the then outgoing Vice-Chancellor, buttressed by a self serving coterie of sycophants, turned into a nightmare for B.Sc. (Programs). Thankfully B.Sc. (Hons) Courses were then saved from slaughter. Now when you are soon to acquire the status of the outgoing Vice-Chancellor, please do not infect all Science Courses with debilitating virus.
Sir, you must realize that by denying a debate on the desirability and feasibility of the semester system at the UG level, you have converted the ‘semester system’ into a hate phrase amongst dominant majority of university teachers. This in itself is a sure recipe for the failure of the system you want introduced. We realize that change is ‘eternal’; but in a university system it has to emanate from ‘internal’ debate, not from ‘external’ arm twisting. Why, pray why, are you so afraid of a structured debate on the semester issue!!
You have often enlisted some advantages of the semester cum credits system which can be delineated as: (a) mobility across universities in India and abroad; (b) encouragement to interdisciplinarity; (c) conformity with global standards; (d) academic activity throughout the year instead of the year end. But these advantages are only anecdotal, there is no quantifiable data to substantiate these claims. Merely because a system is prevalent in USA and Europe, it does not make it desirable in a university of the mammoth size of Delhi. Where is a university in the west with about 3 lakh students distributed in over 70 departments and 80 colleges? In IITs, IIMs, JNU, etc where the semester system exists, the total strength in each institution is less than the average students’ strength in a Delhi College.
Some relevant questions arise:
How are you encouraging ‘mobility’ when you are denying semester system to over 1.5 lakh students of SOL of Delhi University? Is mobility possible when the course structures of different universities are not compatible and comparable? Are you not encouraging mobility towards ‘foreign universities’ as and what they establish base in Delhi and around?
How are you encouraging ‘interdisciplinarity’ when (a) you have a fixed 24:6:2 structure at all levels, and (b) when non-science faculties are not prepared to join the semester stream. Can a student of B.Sc. (Hons) Physics take a course in, say, forensic science or psycho-analysis?
Can the interdisciplinarity not be built up in the well established ‘annual’ scheme? How is it a function only of the semester scheme?
Is it not a fact that semester system has merit only where teachers have autonomy to frame courses, teach and evaluate (like in IITs, IIMs, JNU, etc).
How does the semester system not reduce itself merely to a bi-annual system (instead of an annual one). Students may have a long period of leisure followed by a short period of intense memorization by rote, repeated twice a year. A cohesive paper may be split into two semesters, as has actually happened in your proposed scheme and the help which a student gets in doing them together vanishes.
Is it not necessary to keep in mind that admissions in DU Colleges do not stabilize before August end, that extra and co-curricular activities have to be accommodated, that examinations have to be held in climatically suitable conditions, etc before ejecting out the existing and healthy annual system.
The University had few years back introduced semester system in courses like BBS, BA (H) Business Economics, B.Sc. (H) Computer Science, etc. How many students of these courses have earned credits, availed of mobility towards foreign universities, earned credits there and came back to DU to finish the course. Such inputs are required before extending the semester scheme across all undergraduate honours and other courses. Scientific spirit demands drawing of inferences from empirical observations.
Mr. Vice-Chancellor, no system in itself is superior per se. It is always how people use it and whether it is the right fit for the society at a given time. Even by following the annual scheme for the last 88 years, the Delhi University is one of the top universities of India and well respected in the knowledge centres all around the globe. Also there are examples of universities which follow semester systems, most private professional universities do, and are counted as academic catastrophes. There is no reason why innovative, globally accepted, teaching and evaluating methods can not be implemented within the framework of the existing annual scheme.
Let me conclude by asserting that we are not opposed to change; we are not per se opposed to the semester system. But we are certainly opposed to the abhorrently crude manner in which you are seeking to push the semester system down the collective throat of the university. It is often said that on the semester issue our Vice-Chancellor is behaving like bull in the china shop. Please do not take it as a personal affront if the teaching community feels that, striding nearly across 7 centuries, Mohammad Bin Tuglaq speaks through the present university administration. Tuglaq was convinced that he was a reformist administrator, but the history judged him differently.
Sir, I respect your faith in the semester system. As an individual you are entitled to it, but as a Vice-Chancellor you should share your faith with us through an open and democratic debate? Why do you think that we, a collection of 20-30 noisy ‘activists’ as you call us, will hijack the debate. If you are convinced please convince others and do not throw the university down a clearly visible precipice. You will surely appreciate that teachers would be accused of intellectual cowardice if they take whatever the authorities dictate as revealed wisdom.
I hope you will listen to the voice of reason, and postpone the implementation of semester based Science Courses, and initiate the process of building a consensus on the desired and required changes in our university system.
With profound regards,
Yours sincerely,
Sd/-
(INDER KAPAHY)
Former Member, Executive Council & Academic Council,
DUTA Secretary. Chairman, Science Teachers of Delhi University Colleges
Department of Physics, Kirori Mal College
Mobile: 9810037679, e-mail:imkkmc@gmail.com
