St Stephens College to reduce its annual intake by 50 seats owing to lack of infrastructure

Updated on: Friday, May 17, 2013

One of the first ramifications of Delhi University's four-year undergraduate programme is that the highly-reputed St Stephen's College has been forced to reduce its annual intake owing to lack of infrastructure. The college governing body on Thursday decided to reduce its annual intake by 50 seats in a bid to maintain a total strength of 1,200 students on campus over three years.

While there will be no decrease in intake of the honours courses, only 50 percent of the seats of BA and BSc programmes, which have been discontinued under FYUP, have been re-appropriated. The college, therefore, will enrol only 400 students instead of 450 this year. The rest of the seats have been divided between economics and English honours courses with the former getting 40 of the 50 seats, thereby increasing the economics course intake to 90 students.

The decision, which is going to disappoint many aspirants, has been made as the college administration feels that the present infrastructure is inadequate for the extra year.

"Without improving the basic infrastructure a four-year degree is impossible. Creation of two sections is not possible. Under the current structure, students are taught three or four papers. Under the four-year structure it will be seven papers in the first year-two honours, four foundation papers and one IMBH. For example, we now need 19 classrooms in mathematics. In FYUP, we will require 26 classrooms. We will use the BSc programme rooms. In history, the number of periods will increase to 26 from the present 14 periods per week," Nandita Narain, a teachers' representative in the governing body, said.

Principal Valson Thampu could not be contacted following the governing body meeting. The SRCC principal has already hinted at a lottery system for admission to avoid any additional burden on the classrooms.

New Delhi: One of the first ramifications of Delhi University's four-year undergraduate programme is that the highly-reputed St Stephen's College has been forced to reduce its annual intake owing to lack of infrastructure. The college governing body on Thursday decided to reduce its annual intake by 50 seats in a bid to maintain a total strength of 1,200 students on campus at the undergraduate level over three years.

While there will be no decrease in intake of the honours courses, only 50 percent of the seats of BA and BSc programmes, which have been discontinued under FYUP, have been re-appropriated. The college, therefore, will enrol only 400 students instead of 450 this year. The rest of the seats have been divided between economics and English honours courses with the former getting 40 of the 50 seats, thereby increasing the economics course intake to 90 students.

The decision, which is going to disappoint many aspirants, has been made as the college administration feels that the present infrastructure is inadequate for the extra year.

"Without improving the basic infrastructure a four-year degree is impossible. Creation of two sections is not possible. Under the current structure, students are taught three or four papers. Under the four-year structure it will be seven papers in the first year-two honours, four foundation papers and one IMBH. For example, we now need 19 classrooms in mathematics. In FYUP, we will require 26 classrooms. We will use the BSc programme rooms. In history, the number of periods will increase to 26 from the present 14 periods per week," Nandita Narain, a teachers' representative in the governing body, said.

Principal Valson Thampu could not be contacted following the governing body meeting. "The university said that under the four-year structure no infrastructure development will be supported and no logistical support will be granted. So if we are still to admit 410 students in the four-year scheme I end up admitting 1,600. But where is the infrastructure, logistics and laboratories? These are not just concerns but practical difficulties."

Even college administrations are saying they are not in position to add more students. St Stephen's, being a minority college, didn't increase its intake under the OBC reservation scheme. So the situation in other colleges is expected to be worse. A majority of them increased intake in 2010 without any infrastructural additions. The SRCC principal has already hinted at a lottery system for admission to avoid any additional burden on the classrooms.

The college is going to start the admission process from June 1, 2013. Forms will be available in the college from June 5 and aspirants can start online registration from June 1.

St Stephens College to reduce its annual intake by 50 seats owing to lack of infrastructure

More Education news