CU gets student friendly

Updated on: Tuesday, August 24, 2010

With neighbouring Presidency College becoming a university, Calcutta University (CU) is looking to reorient its approach and come up with a more student-friendly image. To begin with, the 153-year-old institution is mulling a shift to the semester system to help students cope with the challenges of modern-day higher education better.

CU vice-chancellor Suranjan Das said such a move was the need of the hour and that the university was also considering the introduction of a new syllabus, which would be in keeping with the modern structure of teaching.

A greater thrust on science and technology subjects is also on the anvil so that CU can remain on top. Das said an impact evaluation of technical education quality improvement programme — part of a project run by the Union government — ranked CU third in the country. Jadavpur University, on the other hand, has been rated sixth. “We must strengthen our tech courses to attract bright students. Even overseas students are applying to CU now, but we cannot accommodate them due to lack of hostel facilities,” he said.

Das said that in all science and technology departments, along with some humanities sections, semester-based teaching has been started at the PG level. But for some subjects, the semester pattern cannot be introduced due to shortage of teaching staff. An internal assessment system, though, has already been planned. Some disciplines might have a 20% component that will be internally assessed.

Stating that Presidency was the pride of CU, Das said his institution would not have any competition with the new university and, instead, would cooperate with it.

On switching over to the semester system of teaching at the UG level, Das said it was not possible right now. “For changing over to the semester method in colleges, we need to create infrastructure to have the right teacher-student ratio. This would be tough to do in the colleges. Even in some of the humanities departments, there are only 15 teachers for more than 300 students. Our aim is to introduce the semester system at the PG level. Some fundamental changes have already started taking place.”

CU has written to UGC seeking more funds to create infrastructure. The V-C lamented that due to paucity of funds, a number of projects have been stalled. (TNN)

Das said CU has tied up with foreign universities in a big way and this will help the students get quality education. “Last week, Canada’s Centre for Asia Pacific Initiative approached us with a tieup proposal.” He added that an institute on foreign policy was launched recently with the help of the foreign ministry and other inter-departmental study centres are also in the pipeline. (TNN)

CU gets student friendly

More Education news