NEW DELHI: A list of vacant seats released by Delhi University (DU) for the special spot admission round shows that around 30 colleges are yet to fill seats for several programmes. Most of these colleges are also the ones that have previously struggled to fill seats. As most of these colleges are off-campus, seats continue to remain vacant even when the varsity has declared that December 31 will be the last date of the admission process. For instance at Aditi Mahavidyalaya, over 25 programmes are still vacant, including courses like BA (H) geography, social work, Hindi patrakarita, BCom (H) and BCom. While at Deshbandhu College, several of the BA (prog) and BSc (prog) courses continue to be vacant, at Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar College there are 16 vacant seats each for BCom and BCom (H) apart from other courses. During this year’s admission process, BCom and BCom (H) had received the most number of applications on the common seat allocation system (CSAS) portal. This year was also the first time when admissions at the varsity took place based on scores obtained by aspirants in common university entrance test (CUET) instead of based on board examination results. Several teachers of the university contended that the new system of admission has not been able to plug this gap. Pankaj Garg, mathematics teacher at Rajdhani College, which has seen 955 admissions out of a sanctioned strength of 1,300, said, “Earlier we used to admit around 30% extra students keeping in mind the dropouts. However, this year, in the maths department out of 78 seats there are only 67 students and by second year the number will reduce. Especially in science courses we have struggled to fill seats.” Stating that the trend was mostly in outer campus colleges, Garg further explained, “This year there was delayed admission and CUET has not worked as far admissions are concerned. Proper counselling of students was not done, which is why several students from rural areas were unaware about a lot of technicalities. The process has actually adversely affected the colleges.” Academic council member Biswajit Mohanty, who teaches at Deshbandhu College, said that the homogenisation has not worked. “This has not been effective as DU has a complex structure. Many of the colleges are prime ones, some middle ranged ones and some others that are peripheral colleges. Students, especially outstation ones, always prefer campus colleges or higher ranking ones. If one thinks that everything can be homogenised and all seats will be filled at one go, then it will have no effect on the university. Many of the colleges like Deshbandhu and Swami Shraddhanand were in fact set up to cater to local needs. But one has to understand these points first,” he added.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/seats-still-vacant-at-30-delhi-university-colleges-mostly-off-campus/articleshow/96352105.cms