Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has registered a dip in the number of applicants this year, with only 60,000 applications coming in compared to nearly 74,000 and 80,000 applications received in the preceding years.
Teachers and students have attributed the dip to the reduced number of seats offered for research programmes after the university adopted the UGC’s 2016 Gazette Notification.
The JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) on Sunday said the implications of the notification would also change the socially-inclusive character of the university as the system of awarding deprivation points for research programmes had been done away with.
According to the JNUTA, thousands apply to the university each year.
On an average, the number of people who apply from Delhi alone equals nearly four times the available seats, while the number of students applying from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is about eight times.
Yet, JNU’s national character remains unaffected due to the awarding of deprivation points, which ensure that students from across the country get an equal opportunity to study at the university.
‘Academic commitment’
“Why don’t applicants from Delhi hog all the seats? Or why not U.P. or Bihar? There are many reasons for this — a national entrance examination conducted simultaneously at 50 centres and an academic commitment to encourage research on varied regions and research questions. But a major contributor is the system of deprivation points that can award students up to 12 extra marks for social and developmental backwardness and gender. These deprivation points make JNU’s intake nearly as rural as urban,” said JNUTA.
‘Research standard to fall’
The association added that these points also ensured that JNU admitted poor and lower middle-class students. It noted that JNU’s research programmes had benefited from what the deprivation points achieved — a variety of experience, knowledge and skills in the classroom.
The association said that with deprivation points being done away with, a fall in research standards would follow.
