DU Admission: DU Academic Council clears common entrance test

NEW DELHI: The Delhi University Academic Council (AC), on Friday, approved holding a common entrance test for Delhi University admissions from 2022 onwards.

The council had discussed board-wise distribution of admissions, over and under admissions in particular courses, OBC admission with reference to Non-Creamy Layer status and alternate strategies for admission to undergraduate courses.

The Delhi University AC went with the recommendation of the nine-member DU committee, set up by the DU Vice Chancellor, which had suggested holding a common entrance test.

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The decision was however passed amid dissents from council members. Dissenting members noted that the committee who framed the report did not include AC members. They also said that the report only takes into consideration the academic session of 2021-22 which was affected by the pandemic and that any change to "tried and tested" admission procedures can only be justified with data analysis for "substantial period of time".

All central universities, including Delhi University, are also discussing the implementation of the nation-wide Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET) following a report by the University Grants Commission (UGC) committee. CUCET was also envisaged in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

DU Admission 2021

The interim report by the DU committee had found “significant variations” in the marking patterns across school boards for 2021.

It found that out of 39 boards, the highest number of students applying and seeking admissions into DU were from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), while the Kerala board stood second. 37,767 students admitted to Delhi University were from the CBSE board; 1,890 were from Kerala Board of Higher Secondary Education.

The Board of School Education Haryana with 1,824 students ,Indian School Certificate (ISC) with 1,606 students and Board of Secondary Education Rajasthan with 1,329 students also had high representation in DU admissions.

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The committee also noted a high mean admission percentage among Kerala (98.43%), Rajasthan (94.68%) and Haryana (92.69%) boards.

As per the report, admissions under the OBC Non-Creamy Layer were also “way above” for school boards of Kerala, Rajasthan and Haryana. Kerala board had 68.68 percent admissions, Rajasthan board had 48.53% admissions and Haryana board had 38.65% admissions under the OBC Non-Creamy Layer.

The report had also noted that fluctuations cannot be avoided and any attempt to devise a formula to normalize marks “may not be equitable on some scale or other”. It said that neither cut-off based admissions and admission through normalization of awarded marks have “maximum objectivity” in admissions.

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The committee then recommended holding a common entrance test.

The committee had also noted that in some of the courses the admissions have been significantly low over the years, especially for reserved category under the Scheduled Tribe category and in languages.

It also noted that female admissions (61 percent) were higher than male admission (39 percent).