DUTA Letter to VC reg. Agenda of the Academic Council Meeting of 24.8.2021

Professor P C Joshi

Vice Chancellor (Acting)

University of Delhi

23.8.2021

Sub: Regarding Agenda of Standing Committee on Academic Affairs of 23.8.2021 and the Academic Council Meeting of 24.8.2021

Dear Prof. Joshi,

The University has called a meeting of the Academic Council tomorrow to discuss issues that have very grave consequences for the teaching community. In this respect, we request that these matters be first discussed at all statutory levels such as Departments, Faculties and Staff Councils before being placed in the Academic Council. Such widespread discussions would enable the University to not take hasty steps towards implementation of the provisions of NEP2020 (the FYUP with MEES) and other Regulations like SWAYAM and ABC. It would do well for the University to remember the disastrous implementation of the FYUP in 2013 and its subsequent withdrawal in 2014 after widespread protests by all stakeholders.

We draw your attention to the following aspects of the proposals being placed in the AC:

1. The recommendations of the NEP Implementation Committee on structure of UG Program of University of Delhi (Agenda no. 1/a) and the UGC Letter no. D. No. F-2-8/2021 (IoE-NEP) dated 19.07.2021 on the matter of Implementation of Multiple Entry and Exit System (MEES)” (Agenda no. 1/b) have not been sent to statutory bodies as ought to have been done.

2. Though the report was ostensibly put up on the Delhi University website in February 2021, there was no attempt to seek feedback from stakeholders.

3. The fixing of the academic year 2022-23 as the year of implementation assumes that the various provisions of the NEP such as FYUP and MEES are feasible and desirable.

4. The implementation of NEP2020 will result in a huge reduction of workload across the board and will lead to retrenchment, which is totally unacceptable to the teaching community.

5. The addition of an extra year will place a huge burden of expenditure on students and the MEES will lead to increase in dropout rate, affecting more women and students from the marginalised and underprivileged sections.

6. The addition of the fourth year will put additional burden on infrastructure in terms of classrooms, labs, etc. Most colleges do not have any space or scope for further expansion. Neither is there any promise of additional grants for creating infrastructure nor has any study been done of the current state in the institution.

7. The other important agenda refers to Annexures 1.6 and 3.0. of Item No.3 of the Standing Committee on Academic Affairs and relates to a complete restructuring of courses. It is unfortunate that the subcommittees mentioned in this document did not have any elected representation, and nor was it placed in the various statutory bodies.   

8. SWAYAM Regulations 2021 and ABC Regulations 2021 are an attack on the autonomy of the University and Departments. These Regulations in the name of “choice” and “flexibility” allow students to take upto 40% – 50% of the credits from SWAYAM repository or from other institutions, depriving teachers of the role in deciding the nature of courses. This will reduce universities to degree issuing entities without ensuring quality and meaningful degrees and employability of students with these degrees. These will redefine the regular stream of courses into semi-regular ones and will impact the rigour, learning environment and the value of the degrees for students. 

9. Annexure 1.6 of the agenda of the Standing Committee states in Clause 4 that the emphasis has to be on the core courses and credits can be earned from other universities for other courses. This would lead to not only a dilution of the programmes but also have disastrous consequences for the workload of teachers.

Please find attached the detailed feedback submitted by the DUTA to the UGC on the Blended Learning Concept Note on 6 June 2021, presenting a comprehensive study of several of these NEP recommendations. We hope that the University will not rush through this exercise but allow time for extensive deliberations on the consequences and fallout of NEP2020.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely,