NEW DELHI: The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is planning to bring back the most unique feature of its admission policy the deprivation point model for PhD students, said Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit.
The university devised a deprivation point model to help students from backward regions, especially women, take admission. It was discontinued a few years back under the stewardship of the previous VC of the university, M Jagadesh Kumar, amid strident denunciation by a section of students. The reinstating of the deprivation model has been a long pending demand of students and teachers.
Santishree said that the varsity is reintroducing the deprivation point model for “inclusivity and equity” on the campus. “We are going to bring back the deprivation point for PhD students because our reserved categories seats don’t get filled up,” she said.
“We are the only university in the country which gives these deprivation points and that is why we have become unique,” she said. Santishree said the varsity is looking to adopt hybrid learning and working on going international to supplement its income, which, she added, is needed to offset some of the `130 deficit the varsity is suffering from.
“We want to make JNU self-reliant. JNU runs some of the best programmes, so we will have hybrid learning. We want to go international, we are getting a lot of requests from foreign universities,” she said.