KYS protests at DU VC's office against fee hike, poor study material

NEW DELHI: The Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS), a students body, on Saturday staged a demonstration outside Delhi University vice-chancellor's office against a fee hike imposed in various courses. The student's body representing working class and marginalised sections also accused the university of providing substandard study material to students of School of Open Learning (SOL).

Members of the students body gathered outside vice-chancellor Yogesh Singh's office while an DU Executive Council meeting was being held. They demanded that the fee hike be immediately withdrawn and the proposed study material be sent for re-evaluation.

The Executive Council (EC), comprising of faculty members and officials of the university, met to deliberate and pass policy proposals concerning students.

A report on fee hike in many undergraduate, postgraduate, and Phd programmes, approved by the vice-chancellor using his emergency powers, was tabled before the EC members. A proposal to approve the study material for School of Open Learning (SOL) students was also tabled at the meeting. Raising slogans against the privatisation of education, the students and activists at the protest said higher education was increasingly inaccessible for marginalised students.

"It is known that since the National Education Policy 2020, there has been a huge fee hike in public-funded higher-education institutions," the KYS said in a statement.

"There is a push by HEFA (Higher Education Financing Agency) to introduce self-finance courses instead of UGC grants, regardless of loan and quality. As a result, without caring about the future of students, especially those from the marginalised sections, the DU administration has drastically increased the fees of various courses in recent years," it said.

In December last year, the fees of several courses were increased by the university, the statement added. The proposal to approve the SOL study material was rejected in the last EC meeting and a review team was asked to make corrections in it after some members flagged several factual and grammatical errors in them. The KYS also demanded an academic audit of SOL and increase in number of seats for students.