#FYUP: A Failed Concept at #DU by Charu Chellani

#FYUP: A Failed Concept

The Siege of Delhi University ended. The campaign started 10 Days and the four year-undergraduate programme is now a history. The protests fell on deaf ears as the DU Administration retreated into the shell, it was perhaps here that the beginning of the end took shape.

Four year undergraduate programme (popularly known as FYUP) was introduced in 2012, which was a move to privatise a public university to enable foreign universities to set up campus in India. FYUP was a boon for the students who wanted to study abroad because in Canada like foreign cities, colleges there need four year undergraduate education but a curse for those students who were not able to study abroad, they have to study four years if they are a student of DU. FYUP was providing bachelor of honours degree and three year graduation programme providing bachelor degree.

In June 2014, UGC sent a legal notice to management, directing the university to immediately scrap FYUP and revert to three year programme. Because of this mess and confusion, the confusion over the admission process in DU, hangs the education future of over 2.5lakhs students. Students were confused and disheartened as no final decision had been taken up so far.

Thoughts about high cut offs are already a tense issue for the students and during scrapping of FYUP, That time they were also facing problems related to their admission procedure.

According to four year undergraduate programme students, they were assured of a world class education, a holistic learning experience, which would improve their prospectus in life ensuring they graduate with a good reputation, but after enrolling for FYUP, students have to sit till 5:00 pm in college for mind numbing classes like for learning balanced diet which no one was interested to attend. Students felt that a lot of their time was being wasted.

No knowledge related to main course subjects and wastage of time on revising fifth standard course was a reason behind scrapping of FYUP.

During reverting of FYUP to three year programme, students of non-maths found difficulty during admissions because after reversion maths was a compulsory subject for honours courses, so many students skipped their favourable honours courses and shifted their interest to another courses, or some dropped year because they did not have any option of taking admission in some other college because it was too late to apply in some other college. B.tech students found difficulty because they need four year graduation but now they are getting three year graduation which has no value.

Course burden has now increased for those students who entered in DU during four year undergraduate programme because now they need to study course of three years in two years.

Students left with many questions..

Why FYUP was introduced?

Wasn't everything checked before launching it?

After all it was a valuable one year to our degree.

In short FYUP was a well-researched scheme. Everything will be better and better after time passes and practice. No one thought to wait and scrapped it which created problems for many students during their admission time.

India needs millions of young educated professionals which will come from university and not from mars.