Only half of the 2.5 lakh students who complete their schooling each year are able to make it to city colleges for higher studies, Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia said during the inauguration of Ambedkar University of Delhi’s new campus at Karampura here on Wednesday.
Standards of education
Urging the faculty and university officials to maintain the standards of education at all costs, he emphasised the need to scale up the capacity of the university to accommodate more students.
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The new campus, earlier being used by Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, is expected to accommodate over 2,200 students by 2019.
For the academic year that begins from August 1 onwards, 200 undergraduate students in four courses — BA (Hons) Economics, BA (Hons) English, BA (Hons) Psychology, and BA (Hons) Social Science and Humanities — have been admitted. So far, AUD was functioning from its Kashmere Gate campus, where 40 undergraduate, postgraduate and research programmes are currently offered. AUD aims to become a multi-campus varsity with facilities across the city and two additional campuses in Rohini and Dheerpur, scheduled to be inaugurated in 2020.
Mr. Sisodia challenged both the teachers and the students to make the university a much sought after institute. He also emphasised the need for research activities on campus along with skill-related courses.
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AUD Vice-Chancellor Shyam B. Menon said the university’s vision was to work in the area of development studies, public policy, disability studies and publishing, among others.
State-funded university
“The objective is to expand and diversify the classroom mode of education to the field exploring mode of education,” he added.
AUD is a State-funded university and has 85 per cent seats reserved for students from the city. Established by the Delhi government in 2008, it currently has 1,800 students. This year, AUD saw a 173.85 per cent jump in the number of applicants.