Despite repeated protests from many members the University faculty, the semester system will mark its beginning from the next academic year i.e. 2010-11. Empowered Committee for the Implementation of Semester System (ECIS) drafted a proposal inviting suggestions and objections from students and the faculty members of the university by placing it on the website.
The ECIS has outlined each semester to be a 19-week affair with the first one starting from July till December and the second one from January till the last day of the academic year i.e May 14.
A uniform academic calendar as per which both the semesters will consist of 15 weeks of teaching, two weeks of exams, a week each of preparatory holidays for examinations and mid-semester breaks.
The present mid-term examination and final examination will be replaced
by semester-end examinations. There will be centralized time-bound
marking . Each course shall have a certain number of credits assigned to it depending upon its lecture, tutorial and Practical contact hours in a week. Assignments, both written ones and presentations, will be an integral part of every paper. The number of assignments, however, will be reduced. The Postgraduate admissions however, have also seen a change from its usual criteria. As a general policy, postgraduate departments will be required to admit 50% of their students from the Honours courses on the basis of marks. For the other 50% seats, there will be entrance examination. Now students have an option to pursue Master’s even in a ‘Minor’ subject after they clear the entrance examination.
All the undergraduate courses are deemed to have four papers per semester, thus taking the toll to 24 papers in 6 semesters. The Honours Programme has seen a shift from its regular course. From its earlier system of major and elective subjects minor subjects will now be included. Out of these 24 papers, the ‘Major’ courses would consist of at least 14 subjects while 3 to 4 of them will be dedicated to the elective subjects including one mandatory paper each, in language and computational techniques. The new scheme also proposes an extra compulsory course in Environmental Studies.
Additionally, the proposal put up on the Delhi University website (www.du.ac.in) declared that as per a survey conducted amongst post graduate students , it was discovered that they would have liked to study some other subjects along with their Honours course. This however seems to be on the verge of cancellation in order to avoid an overload on the students.
The entire process will be finalized by March, as the absolute document is set before the Academic Council by January 2010.
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