New Delhi: Even as the Delhi University administration announced approval of syllabus for Economics and Political Science courses for four-year degree programme, a section of professors on Sunday claimed the decisions were taken without any discussion or consent of teachers.
A statement issued by DU administration said that the Faculty of Social Sciences in a meeting yesterday had granted approval to a list of courses related to the Departments of Economics and Political Science for the four year degree programme.
But a section of professors who attended the meeting alleged that only documents for the courses syllabus were circulated among teachers and that it was decided that a meeting would take place on April 27 for detailed discussions.
"We had been presented the syllabus structure for Economics and Political Science courses at the meeting and assured more than twice that we would discuss it in detail on April 27 after all teachers have gone through the documents presented.
Most of the teachers had left the meeting since a thorough discussion was to take place on the decided date.
"The announcement by the DU administration came as a surprise to all of us as it had been decided from a long time by the faculty that any decision for finalisation of syllabus can take place only after it has been circulated among teachers a week before," said Anita Mathur, Associate Professor at Shriram College of Commerce.
She claimed the syllabus for Political Science was not even in the agenda of the meeting on Saturday.
Reacting to these allegations, DU Registrar Alka Sharma said, "I was not witness to the proceedings but as per the information given to me, there were some teachers who wanted the meeting to be postponed to April 27 and also many who decided to finalise the syllabus on the same day.
"It is the department which decides on the syllabus and they have given their approval for the said courses. All this is just to create confusion and problems by some teachers."
Alleging that not enough time was given to teachers to go through the syllabus, Sundram Shukla, Professor of History at Kirorimal College, said the university wants to implement the four-year structure in any form and does not care about teachers? opinion.
"The syllabus given to us were of several pages and a couple of hours was definitely not enough to go through it. If the procedure of passing the courses is this way, then the four-year programme will be marred with some serious problems," she said.
Sharing similar views, Mathur said restructuring does not mean a "cut and paste job" of the old course into the new four year programme.
"A third year optional paper of the current Economic Honours course, considered as an extremely tough paper, has been made an application course for second year which will be taught to students with non-economics background as well.
"Also, those with Economics background will hardly study any of the main subjects till the second year. These students would not have the option to leave after second year as they would have hardly gained anything in the two years," Mathur said.
The DU statement also said that courses related to the department of Geography and East Asian Studies have already been approved. The four-year degree programme will be implemented from this year.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, April 21, 2013, 21:57
