DU enrolls upto 40% more students, breaching its capacity causing infrastructure crunch

• The University of Delhi (DU) enrolled more students than the available number of available seats for 2019.
  
• Nearly 6,000 new seats were added this year — including 282 for the undergraduate courses.
  
• The number of students scoring 95% and above has increased by 38.4% this year.
  
• To accommodate the increased number of students, the colleges have allotted 80 students per teacher.

The University of Delhi (DU) enrolled more students than the number of available seats for 2019. Many colleges under the university are admitting 20-40% more than their capacity. This is despite the fact that the university had already increased the number of seats, after implementing reservations for EWS (economically weaker sections).

Recently, the Indian government announced that 10% reservation for the EWS category in government jobs and educational institutions. Nearly 6,000 new seats were added this year — including 282 for undergraduate courses.

The university has 62,000 seats in total for undergraduate and postgraduate admissions this year. Foreign admissions are also on the rise this year. As many as 1,000 foreign students were admitted this year.

Stressed infrastructure

The ‘over admissions’ is not new to the university. However, increase in student admissions is unmatched compared to the previous years. For instance, Miranda House enrolled roughly 1,814 students, 714 more than the number of seats.

“We opened a new academic block and have turned some board and seminar rooms into classrooms as well,” Principal Bijayalaxmi Nanda told HT, addressing the infrastructure crunch.

In fact, to accommodate them, colleges allotted 80 students per teacher. “Teachers have taken over and above their share of the workload with the increase in the number of students,” Nanda added.

Zakir Hussain College witnessed 1,816 admissions against 1,580 available seats — 236 more than the designated course seats. The college is trying to accommodate students in different sections and combinations, Hindustan Times reported citing PK Shishodia, admission official of the college.

The number of students scoring 95% and above has increased by 38.4% this year, which has led to higher cut-offs in the university. According to the HT report, over 17,000 students scored 95% and above in CBSE highschool exams, which is 4,956 more than last year.

Given that, the University of Delhi is considering one percent relaxation for students from government-run and rural schools. In fact, the admissions via sports quota will also have some reformation including Olympics, Asian Games and Commonwealth games, News18 reported.

However, despite the highest cut offs at 99%, courses like Political Science witnessed nearly twice the number of student admissions.

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