Foundation course burden on colleges The worst fears of many teachers have come true. Delhi University’s executive council (EC) met on Saturday and cleared the proposed changes to the evaluation system for the foundation courses. The responsibility for most of the evaluation—55 marks—for these highly contentious courses is now on the colleges. The proposal for having DU colleges accredited by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council has finally been cleared—the University Grants Commission had made it mandatory and linked it to funding. Ram Lal Anand (evening) College is now Aryabhatta College. While there were several crucial issues, including biometric attendance system for teachers, only the ones mentioned had been cleared by the time this report was filed. An additional item on the agenda said the vice-chancellor and pro-vice-chancellor’s tenure can cross the age of 65. Elected members Abha Dev Habib, Aditya Narayan Mishra and Javid Chowdhury, the chancellor’s nominee to the EC, dissented on this. Many teachers had opposed the new procedure for evaluation of the foundation courses—55 marks will be evaluated by college and 20, semester-end university evaluation—which marks a rather drastic departure from any in use in DU. They had argued that this will “erode the credibility of external evaluation and take away anonymity and objectivity”. Academic Council member Rudrashish Chakraborty, who teaches English at Kirori Mal College, adds, “Putting the entire onus on colleges will present logistical difficulty” and that the move is towards “dismembering the university” to make way for autonomy of colleges. Teachers who have found the foundation courses illconceived and badly designed from the start fear this will lead to further marks inflation and no student being failed. The screening system for teacher recruitment— at the university and college level-—has also been altered. Earlier, potential teachers were assessed on three parameters and each carried the same weight for recruitment at both the college and university level. The same parameters, such as academic achievement, research experience and teaching, still hold for both sets but the points distribution is different for colleges and university. Now, there will be greater emphasis on research for department-level recruitment than for colleges. COURSE CHANGE A major part of the evaluation for Foundation Courses will be internal Ram Lal Anand College (evening) is now called Aryabhatta College DU will get colleges accreditated by NAAC Points distribution during “screening” process of teachers before recruitment different for college and department (university)
Posted on: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 05:41:54 +0000
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