Delhi varsity executive panel gives nod to new courses in journalism
At a meeting of the University of Delhi Executive Council (EC), Registrar Dr Vikas Gupta said the university would launch a four-year undergraduate course offering students the option of multiple entry and exit points.
Gupta said, “Under National Education Policy (2020), every UG course is of four years, but students have the option of multiple exits and entries. They can leave the course whenever they want. In the previous policy, students did not get anything if they left 3-year courses midway.”
Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh had earlier announced that DU would start a post-graduate course in addition to the existing PG diploma in journalism.
An expert committee has been constituted under the chairmanship of Prakash Singh, Director, South Delhi Campus, for the launch of a two-year postgraduate Hindi journalism course in the Hindi Department of South Campus.
Approval has also been given for the formation of a committee to start a post-graduate course in English journalism under the English Department. The EC also approved revisions to the curriculum in various departments, including psychology, sociology and English.
Sociology curriculum changes include the removal of theorists such as Karl Marx and Thomas Robert Malthus from the paper ‘Population and Society’, and the scrapping of a unit on ‘Sociology of Food’.
Controversial syllabus changes include the removal of case studies involving Kashmir, Palestine, India-Pakistan tensions and the Northeast, replaced by the religious texts such as the Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita.
The council has passed rules for seniority of teachers (Assistant Professors/Lecturers) in the DU colleges and departments of the colleges/institutions concerned. Under this, if all relative qualifications are equal, the seniority of teachers for all purposes can be determined on the basis of date of birth.
A committee was constituted in this regard under the chairmanship of Dean of Colleges Balram Pani.
The committee opined that if all relative merits were equal, seniority of teachers for all purposes may be determined on the basis of age/date of birth — the teacher who is older shall be treated as senior to the teacher who is younger, and if age is equal, seniority shall be determined on the basis of academic performance indicator (API) score.
The DU Vice-Chancellor said the university had to return only 10 per cent of the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) loan in 10 years.
He said new buildings were being constructed with the money received from HEFA.
Giving information about the expansion of health services for DU employees, Singh said the university had signed a MoU with the Railway Hospital in Delhi.
