The first time I heard of Delhi university cut offs were a year before I had to be bothered by them personally. I admit, I didn't follow the “college-speak” in the newspapers, nor the witty repertoire of RJs every morning. I knew that I wanted to study psychology. I knew which colleges were offering it. Neither me nor my parents were college hopping because we never imagined the need for it, no offense intended, no arrogance assumed. There just wasn't any time to spare. When the cut offs came, I remember wondering how the hell did I clear them. LSR had a first cut off of 96.5 or something (I forgot what it was as soon as I knew I got through), for psychology and I had cleared it miraculously I still maintain.
DU is in the heart of the city and thus puts its students at an advantage when it comes to placements and exposure to multiple avenues for molding your talent whatever they are. But the fact remains that this is a geographical and political advantage that Delhi has, not Delhi University per se. it sees a variety of immigrant students who find freedom and comfort in exploring their interests and expanding their identities through the medium of their college activities. It is an exciting and challenging place to be where one figures out whether the beliefs and opinions they hold are their own and how much.
Now, there are differences between colleges within the university, to deny that would be foolishness. Differences in the effectiveness of faculty, the discipline in college, the values it chooses to uphold, infrastructure, student bodies etc make it difficult to describe the university uniformly. Therefore even when you do pass out with a degree from DU, the kind of student you are is not automatically established.
Friends told me how lucky I am to get into LSR, why, I was to know later. And I think my reasons would differ from theirs a little. First of all as Tanushree, my classmate and friend said correctly, LSR is hardly a good representation of DU because the culture, the expectations and the peer group is quite different from the rest of DU. I am saying different not necessarily better always. Here, I’ve found that, the presence of DU is ghost–like. We follow the rules, guidelines and basic syllabus set by the university, but the way the students and teachers handle themselves within the college is more to do with the space created by their own ideas. There is individuality within the collective identity of LSR.
The marks might be a criterion that got many of us through here. But it’s certainly not a decisive factor in determining how we get educated. But the kind of discrimination meted out to the rest of the colleges within DU except a few is disheartening. I am not sure whether I am right but if each college were to maintain a unique cultural identity of its own, and if students themselves be active participants in it rather than consider themselves handed out leftovers from the “Happy Meal”, we can have a space where students create standards of their own. It the harshest of verdicts upon a student’s future when he or she is made to believe they are less than worthy or have less potential than others just on the basis of marks in the 12th grade.
I think the poor chaps pursuing a course with the tag B. Tech deserve a separate paragraph at the very least. Not only is the degree losing its value by the batch, but the situation of students in private institutions offering a b tech is even worse. As more and more parents and students are trapped in the illusion that a b. tech will end all their problems and fulfill all desires, what we as a nation are losing out is a workforce with specialized skills and training in multiple avenues that are far far more crucial to us as a society. This is apart from the huge crime of ignoring their interests and aptitudes.
I feel worse when I think that my juniors are receiving a B. Tech in Psychological Sciences. I cannot get into the details of that without being traumatized. But there is another interesting point to note which my friend told me, is whenever a B Sc or a B. A. degree is modified into a B. Tech, admission rates increase. So are the increasing reforms of course/degree structure a technique to grab more admissions? As more and more students pour into classrooms, is the quality of teaching being compromised? For me these are rhetorical questions now since I've seen what bad course structure and examination policies can do to the best of student-teacher relationships.
In the end, as far as my education is concerned, it has been more to do with things I learnt outside the classroom than within it. It is to do with the kind of people who raise standards of excellence in critical reasoning, in awareness of social realities and in values important in life. It is hardly about perfection, getting the highest marks or being well placed right after graduation, though these are also achievable. I know that a large part of it has been due to my being in the college that I am in, but I think every student deserves and can make for themselves a unique education on their own. No matter where they are, they can choose to learn things that matter. Because more often than not, such things neither come with ready-made syllabus, nor are they time-bound, but when we are tested at crucial points in our life, it is our education not our qualifications that determine our “grades” as a person, and as a scholar.
LSR- Lady Shri Ram College for Women
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