With the admission process in Delhi University almost over,colleges stare at a new problem over-admission poses a challenge to faculty members and raises questions about the quality of education for the incoming batch of undergraduates. Most point to a structural flaw in the admissions policy. And there is a case of a planning fallacy across the board. Colleges ambitiously admitted more than the sanctioned number of students with the confidence that the numbers would fluctuate over the release of cut-off lists,eventually stabilising to a reasonable figure. Many colleges are still counting on daily withdrawals for the final admission figure to stabilise. While some choose to believe that the final admission figures are still uncertain,it is inevitable that coping with a larger student body is a feat that these colleges have to deal with in future. What is being done to cater to and accommodate a larger-than-stipulated student population? Dr Pratibha Jolly,principal of Miranda House,said: Facilities and infrastructure cannot be created overnight. We have to split the students into two sessions and make optimum use of the existing infrastructure. Most colleges are looking to the same temporary solutions to cope with the problem. Jolly described how available space is thrice optimized: The museum will be used as a classroom,a laboratory and a department library. Principal P C Jain of Shri Ram College of Commerce is more hopeful of the secondment of additional teachers to the college by the UGC. He believes that in light of serving a cause to educate the young,the government would step in to alleviate the burden. The government always helped us and we believe we will get the sufficient number of teachers before July 21 when semester starts. Other colleges,however,are less presumptuous,making adjustments with existing human and material resources. Dr Anju Srivastava,Media Coordinator and Associate Professor for Chemistry at Hindu College,said: The workload and the number of teachers is based on the sanctioned strength. You have the same number of teachers managing the same scale of show. This is not a very happy situation. Teachers are the first to bear the brunt of over-admission. Dr Saswati Sengupta,an English lecturer from Miranda House,is of the opinion that the quality of education will suffer to an extent. Teacher-student interaction will be limited and this is problematic because individual attention to students,which is often required,is an important attribute of a good quality education. Most of these colleges point their fingers at systemic policy inefficiencies. Amongst more radical demands such as building more colleges,a generic entrance test,increasing the already superfluous competition and interviewing each and every applicant,Dr Kanika Khandelwal,faculty member of Lady Shri Rams Department of Psychology,suggests going back to conventional admissions methods: Please go back to application forms. Without them,we are indeed shooting in the dark. Dr Srivastava summed it up: As long as admissions are based entirely on cut-offs,we have to continue playing this game. (Anisah Ahmad from National University of Singapore is on an internship with The Indian Express under the SICCI-India Internship Program 2011)
