DUTA opposes Institutional Development Plan, suggests reviewing NEP, fee hike, admission criteria

NEW DELHI: Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) has opposed the Institutional Development Plan (IDP) tabled in the DU Academic Council meeting on October 10 and raised critical concerns about the institution’s autonomy, educational quality, and commitment to social justice. An elected member of the DU AC, Mithuraaj Dhusiya, termed the IDP as “anti-teacher, anti-student and anti-education”.

The DU teachers have also written a letter addressing vice-chancellor Yogesh Singh highlighting the issues related to the structure and implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) and urged him to review the policy.

DUTA reminded the VC and academic council members that issues were raised earlier, and detailed DUTA’s charter of demand submitted on August 22, a little progress has been made at the university level.

Elected member of DU academic council Mithuraaj Dhusiya said: "The Institutional Development Plan placed in the AC meeting was completely anti-teacher, anti-student and anti-education. Among other things, it advocated moving away from government-funding and running the University in a self-financing model. It advocated lateral entry into administration bypassing all UGC recruitment norms. It talks about imposing drone-based surveillance on students and staff of the University. We strongly dissented on the whole document."

Privatisation vs research

They have also expressed apprehension about partnerships with ‘private corporations and industrial sectors’ “under the guise of promoting research and entrepreneurship”. “Such proposals open the doors for foreign influences to shape the university’s research priorities in directions that may undermine the sovereignty of the country,” it said.

For instance, disciplines like philosophy, literature, and history often pursue research that has little immediate commercial outcomes but have definite positive influences on long term social development. “Industry collaborations tend to prioritize fields that yield direct short term private corporate benefits, which may result in decreased funding or support for critical research on social issues and the humanities,” the teachers association said in a joint statement.

In its first reaction, the teachers agreed that every institution needs development, however, as the university which caters students from across the country, “a special caution and care needs to be taken that neither the character of the Central Govt fully funded university is compromised nor the burden of development is shifted to socially disadvantageous class and/or economically poor or middle class of the country”, it said.

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“These financial strategies involve firstly a substantial fee hike for students, justified under the banner of internal resource generation, will disproportionately impact students from reserved categories adversely.”

“The plan set out in the IDP includes increasing fees for university facilities and lending campus resources to private enterprises for profit. Such steps could significantly increase the ‘financial burden on students’, especially those coming from marginalised communities,” it said. Further, it said that all developments have to be carried through government funding and help and not through HEFA loans, which leads universities to hike fees.

DUTA opposes fee hike

Currently, Delhi University receives 76.6% of the University's funds from University Grants Commission (UGC). “However, the long term goals as set out by the IDP is to make Delhi University "independent" of public funding which is a euphemism for commercialisation and de facto privatisation,” the teachers said.

This process is sought to be furthered by increasing student fees, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), literary festivals, concerts, art fairs, ‘industry partnerships’, international research organizations, alumni contributions and Endowments, R&D and Intellectual Property (IP) Revenue, renting out laboratories for external research, filing patents, and licensing technology innovations, and University shopping complex to sell products from student start-ups and various commercial shops to meet the campus population’s needs.

“DU colleges, especially 12 Delhi government-funded colleges are confronted with a fund cut and no appointment situation. This has made the situation pathetic and the question of their survival has come knocking at the door of the university. First duty of the university administration to save these colleges and then consider a development plan. Moreover, any development plan, without involving constituent colleges of DU is least expected to take off,” the statement read.

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DU admission criteria

The teachers suggested that the university should revise its appointment criteria and admission criteria in the light of recent development on UG and PG admissions plus NFS happening on teaching positions. They also urged the university to fill all vacant positions following constitutional provisions of reservation and filling all backlog plus shortfall positions.

Teachers also expressed concerns regarding ‘Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS)’ and said focus on subject without a balanced presentation of other global perspectives and dissident Indian currents (of those hailing from India's oppressed majority) reflects an ideological slant that could lead to the propagation of anti-constitutional communal ideas within an academic space

For instance, the IDP mandates that all PhD candidates must publish at least two articles in ‘Scopus-indexed journals’ to be eligible for thesis submission. This requirement places immense pressure on students, as publication in ‘Scopus-indexed journals’ demands significant time and effort as well as access to resources that the academic set up does not provide primarily due to attenuated public funding; and more importantly, there are so many subjects where such journals do not exist at all.

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Degrading classroom education

The IDP proposal to expand ‘digital and hybrid learning’ including the incorporation of ‘Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), is a stark example of how it risks degrading classroom education. This shift not only undermines the quality of student-teacher interactions but also suggests a move toward a model that could potentially disadvantage the majority of the youth who are without access to high-quality digital resources.

Recommendations that promote the involvement of ‘external individuals in key statutory bodies’ could compromise the university’s academic autonomy through corporate capture, it opined. DUTA said it will hold its meeting on this issue and submit detailed feedback later.