DU gears up for semesters in arts, business

Semester system is again being talked about in the campus. After being introduced across 13 undergraduate science programmes with enormous difficulty, Delhi University (DU) is now silently gearing up for doing the same in the humanities and commerce courses too by the next academic year.

According to university sources, the departments of commerce and English have already taken a footstep in this direction. Though the commerce syllabi were ready on time, the university decided to apply semester in the second phase from the 2011-12 session due to antagonism from teachers.

According to sources from the commerce department, the university administration below the new vice-chancellor, Dinesh Singh, has ask for suggestions from college teachers on the semester syllabi framed final year. A letter was written to all colleges asking them to send their teacher representatives for a 'preliminary meeting', which will be held in January.

Meanwhile, the English department, which hasn't even begun the process of revising the syllabus for the semester system so far, is convinced of coming up with a latest syllabus in 3 months' time. "I have written to all colleges to summon a meeting of English teachers and to come up with suggestion which will be tabled at a meeting in the first or second week of January," said Sumanyu Sathpathy, head of English department, DU.

Apart from English, economics, sociology and history syllabi were also not revised. Though syllabi of languages like Hindi and political science, among others, were accomplished last year itself, semester could not be introduced in 2010-11 for these courses as the teachers opposed it at the last instant. While there has been no official communication from the new vice-chancellor on the prospects of semester system in humanities and science courses, sources in the university state that the recent high court verdict has left the remaining departments with modest option.

While VC Dinesh Singh refused to comment on whether the arts and humanities courses would be taught in semester approach from next year, a senior professor of commerce department said, "End of Deepak Pental's term doesn't mean that the policies formulated in his tenure are not valid any more. Pental had announced that semester system would be introduced in arts and commerce from 2011-12. Professor Dinesh Singh has not given any respond to statement. So, semester for apprentice commerce courses from 2011 is a reality."