NEW DELHI: The Academic Council of Delhi University on Tuesday passed the resolution seeking to raise the number of students in a class. The six members against this resolution stated the student-teacher ratio will impact the quality of education.
The DU has fixed 60 students per batch for lectures, 30 for tutorials and 25 for practical classes in undergraduate programmes. For postgraduate courses, the numbers per batch are 50, 25 and 15-20, respectively. The university issued a notification to colleges on November 11 in this regard.
“The Academic Council accorded its approval regarding uniformity in teacher-students ratio in all the programmes and courses being offered by the university and its colleges, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels vide the notification,” a university official said.
Speaking against the notification, several teachers’ bodies stated that this batch size is bigger than normal and will not help students. The dissenting members have highlighted that the imposition of the notification issued on November 11 will have grave adverse consequences for the quality of the teaching-learning process in college and university departments.
In the notification, Registrar Vikas Gupta said the university came up with the rule to observe uniformity in the teacher-student ratio across all the programmes it offers. Among the six council members who opposed the resolution are Rajesh Kumar, Biswajit Mohanty, Mithuraj Shusiya, Sudhanshu Kumar and Nidhi Kapoor.
The dissenting members said that the raising of the tutorial group size to 30 students for UG courses and 25 for PG courses “negates” the very idea of small group interaction and denies students the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding and clarify niggling doubts. DU has approved the proposal to hold postgraduate admission through the Common University Entrance Test, starting from the next academic year.