Delhi University’s outgoing Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh on Friday said that the Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) that was introduced during his term and had to be rolled back later was actually introduced after a lot of deliberation.
“As against the accusations on me of having introduced the FYUP without consulting people, I would like to tell you all that an immense amount of deliberation and consultation went into it. In fact no other V-C would have carried out this tremendous exercise before introducing a new thing to the university,” Dinesh Singh said while interacting with reporters during his last visit to colleges as the V-C.
“We consulted 4,000 teachers, 4,000 students and their parents before bringing out the curriculum. My colleagues from the university have visited around 47 colleges in DU and took feedback from the students about FYUP and 85 percent of them actually agreed to it. We have everything on record, but none ever asked my side of the story. Everyone just kept blaming me for having put a burden on them in the name of FYUP,” Mr. Singh said.
“Even for designing the curriculum, we consulted teachers and a lot of other experts and after an exhaustive exercise of inviting the comments and suggestions, we formed a 60-member committee to go through the suggestions and come up with a curriculum,” he added.
Before the end of his term, Mr. Singh paid visit to four DU colleges including Hansraj College, Maitreyi College, Lady Irwin College and Shri Venkateshwara College and interacted with teachers and students there.
He spoke to students about their studies, the kind of facilities they are getting and if there are any problems that they have had to face. Students were enthusiastic to see the V-C interacting with them.
In Maitreyi College when he stepped inside the lawn where students were sitting and filling their examination form, the girls looked surprised. One of them said: “I never expected that someone of the stature of V-C would come and meet us in the college. I am really happy to see him here.”
His interaction with students in Shri Venkateshwara College was a long one where he spoke to students about the importance of Rig Veda, teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and adopting technology in their lives.
“I am extremely happy to meet the energetic bunch of students studying in DU. I feel good that they are doing well and are enjoying their time at the university. This is exactly the kind of response a V-C would expect during his last days in the university,” Mr. Singh said.
“While I have no regrets about my tenure in the university, there are something I wish I could have done as the V-C. I feel I could have made better use of technology for teaching the students,” he added.
We consulted 4,000 teachers, 4,000 students and their
parents before bringing out
the curriculum
