Delhi University (DU) has released the academic calendar for the students taking admission in Undergraduate (UG) courses this year. Shortly after its release, teachers associated with the university described it as a very disappointing situation for the students and teachers.
The teachers stated that the students have not been given enough time to prepare for the examination and the syllabus in the new calendar, according to which, the first year classes are to start from November 2 and Semester 2 classes will start from March 20, 2023.
Abha Dev Habib, professor in the Department of Physics at DU’s Miranda House College, said that there are no holidays or mid-semester breaks for students to absorb what is being taught.
According to DU’s Democratic Teachers’ Front (DTF), the syllabus that a student should cover in a year is now being completed in a span of 9 months. It believes that this is a result of the blunder of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET).
We could have tried to end the admissions in August or mid-September after the declaration of class XII results in July. There may be 50 percent or more admissions after November 2. We are barely ending the second round of Common Seat Allocation System (CSAS) on November 3, said Habib, adding that earlier the academic session used to start only after 6-8 cut-off rounds.
Also, there has been a lot of delay in PG admissions.This year, we have a separate calendar for each class which means that there will be minimum interaction between students of different years. This has also resulted in non-stop work for individual units, with no separate time-frames to handle examination, evaluation and teaching, Habib added.
Teachers’ organisations also believe that many teachers are overburdened with academic responsibilities and hence, have not got leave. The ad-hoc faculty have suffered the most as they will use their mid-semester breaks and leave for personal work or medical purposes as they are entitled to only limited leave.