'Grades getting better, so are the cut-offs'

NEW DELHI: The high-cut offs leave many students smarting, especially this year, when even those with 88 or 89% did not make it to the college of their choice. Some with 83% had to settle for an evening college in south Delhi. Even as DU opens its doors to another batch of fresh students, many are either unhappy with the college they got into or are ruing the fact that they couldn''t make it to DU.
Times City spoke to the man at the helm of affairs at DU V-C Deepak Nayyar answers why the cut-offs keep rising and where the solution lies.
According to Nayyar, there are two factors behind the trend. "What is happening is a consequence of grade inflation in all school leaving examinations. It isn''t as if the students are getting brighter each year. The grades are getting more generous," said Nayyar.
The second factor Nayyar pointed out was multiple applications. "Young people are more aware of competition and apply everywhere. The cut-off goes high. The top few colleges get snapped sooner as everybody wants to be there. In all practicality, the third cut-off list is more logical," he added.
Nayyar also accepted that despite the ever-increasing number of applicants, for regular stream courses, there has not been a significant increase in the number of seats. This year nearly over 1.25 lakh candidates applied for 43,000 seats. Of these 43,000, about 30% fall in various reserved categories. Only the remaining 70% are for general category candidates.
But why not have more colleges then? To this Nayyar responded: "I am not a magician. I cannot snap my fingers and create a college. Resources, both financial and human, are scarce." DU has an annual budget of Rs 350 crore. The average recurring cost of running a college is about Rs 5 crore per annum. DU has 81 colleges, including about 20 professional colleges, and 12 faculties.
When questioned about the sensitive issue of permanent recruitment of teachers both at the university and college level, Nayyar agreed that it is "both necessary and desirable" to have permanent appointments.
"There are only a few university departments where the number of vacancies is critical. But, visitors'' nominees have been appointed and soon the vacancies will be filled. As far as colleges are concerned, we are doing our best to persuade the UGC to lift the de-facto ban that it imposed two years ago," explained Nayyar.
Considering the fact the Anandakrishnan Committee, set up by the UGC to formulate workload norms for DU teachers, has completed its work, DU may soon see the ban being lifted too. At least that is what Nayyar believes.