Stream Change Rule in DU to get stopped in English Department

The English faculty of the Delhi University has recently suggested that the policy of docking a standard 2.5 percent points for jumping the streams by the students during their admission in the colleges must stop. If not for all the subjects it must be stopped for English, pointed the teachers. The docking of the marks began in the year 2015 in DU and it altered the composition of English (Hons) classes drastically. All the deserving candidates who studied humanities in their schools were kept out from taking English, due to the cut of 2.5 percent marks.

Delhi University, in their last year admission, cut off 2.5 percent points from the best-four aggregate of the students who applied for a discipline that they haven’t studied in their high schools. Since, English was the common language in the schools, students from all streams commerce, science and humanities applied for the course without any damage to the total cut off percentage. The teachers of the department thus are asking for a system of issuing differential cut off marks for different school streams. They are suggesting that, instead of standardized penalty, the university should come up with subject specific cut off rules.

According to Rudrashish Chakraborty, who teaches English in Kirori Mal College, “Applicants from humanities can now get admission to BA (H) English only if their aggregate marks in Class XII are equal or more than the applicants from commerce or science streams which is not the case most often.” He further added, “Earlier, the 27 general category seats were more evenly distributed across science, humanities and commerce students.”

Due to the students from other streams filing up the English classes the classroom atmosphere is changing drastically. Teacher student’s interaction and standard of assignments are also going downwards. For the fact based teaching module and step by step instruction habits among the science and commerce students, they are finding it difficult to write long answers and the doubts that there may not be one right answer to the questions.  According to another teacher, “There is a vast difference between students who are interested and those who aren’t.”

Rudrashish Chakraborty summed up saying, “Most of the students who stayed back in English Honors course, did so because they did not get the course of their choice in commerce or science and hence they hardly showed any academic interest in the course at all.”