The Hindu : New Delhi News : DU nod for `overhaul' of courses

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 14, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

DU nod for `overhaul' of courses

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, OCT. 13. In what promises to go down as an year of change for Delhi University's forsaken courses, five more "basic" undergraduate courses are now all set to join the league of restructured programmes on this premier campus, with a new lease of life now given to the B.A. (Hons) and B.Sc. (General) programmes. Science students will have at least two new options from next year, with two new B.Sc. (Hons) courses to be introduced.

At a meeting held this past Monday and Tuesday, the Academic Council of Delhi University approved of the restructuring of the courses, which will come into effect from July 2005. Although the move to change the courses has been welcomed by various university fractions, debates on whether the change will actually help attract more students towards the basic courses and whether it is a qualitative change are already on.

While the structure of the main discipline courses in the existing B.A. (Hons) course will remain unchanged, four concurrent courses will replace the existing language and subsidiary courses. Carrying 200 marks, the courses would include one compulsory language course, with the students getting to choose between English, Hindi and any other language and three other courses chosen by the student from a set of optional courses.

Students taking the course will also have to choose a compulsory non-credit course in a language other than one chosen as a concurrent course. The optional courses, on the other hand, will include inter-disciplinary and discipline centred courses, with the former being introduced after joint deliberations by the departments. In the case of disciplinary courses, all the major disciplines that are currently being taught as subsidiary subjects in the B.A (Hons) courses will be included.`

Students joining the courses from next year will be learning the compulsory language courses in the first year, with the concurrent courses being taught in both the first and second year and the main courses being taught in the first, second and third year. In the case of basic Science courses, students now have two new Science courses to choose from -- B.Sc. ( Hons) in Biological Sciences and B.Sc. (Hons) Science.

To be offered initially by the University departments, colleges that have the infrastructure to offer the B.Sc. (Hons) in Biological Sciences can offer the course from next year.

The B.Sc. (Hons) courses in all subjects will carry on in their current form, with exception to those courses in which the subsidiary subjects have not yet been integrated into the programme as credit courses.

They will now follow the line of B.Sc. (Hons) courses in Physics and Chemistry that have already the integrated the subjects.

The existing B.Sc (General) courses will now be replaced by four new programmes. While B.Sc. (Gen) Group A will now be called B.Sc. Physical Sciences, B.Sc. (Gen) Group B will now be known as B.Sc. Life Sciences. The main change in the courses, would now be the inclusion of Biology in the former and Mathematics in the latter.

The B.Sc. General with Electronics, computer science, mathematical sciences, industrial chemistry and analytical chemistry and Biochemistry will be known as B.Sc. Applied Physical Sciences, that with environmental science, sericulture and agro-chemical and pest control would be known as B.Sc. Applied Life Sciences.

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