DU’s sought after Economics Honours severely devalued, say teachers

Days after the Delhi University (DU) administration announced that the Faculty of Social Sciences had approved the new Economics syllabus for the four-year degree programme, various teachers of Economics courses from various DU colleges, including SRCC and St Stephens, are demanding a ‘complete rejection of the new structure’. As part of the big reform push led by DU’s Vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh, the university will introduce US-style four-year undergraduate programmes from July 2o13. The move, however, has been mired in controversy amid allegations of being pushed through with haste and without more public debate. ( Read full report here )[caption id=“attachment_725641” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Delhi University students. AFP[/caption] The new syllabus, say teachers, has resulted in ‘a severe devaluation of the Economics Honours programme, which is one of the most sought after courses in the DU undergraduate system’. Says Anita Mathur, Associate Professor, Economics Department, Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), “Even though Delhi University may not be in the top 200 universities, our students especially from the Economics Honours programme are treated on par with students from top universities. I don’t remember a single student of mine being denied admission to the London School of Economics. You will find economic graduates in top corporate positions around the world.” Questioning the haste in which the course was put together, teachers who are opposing the new syllabus in a joint statement have said that “the syllabus structure that 18 college departments had submitted was not adhered to. Shockingly, teachers were not informed of the course outline and the information was kept strictly confidential…Since when has the exercise of designing course become confidential?" Among the specific issues that have been raised with the new syllabus are reduction in the number of courses being offered, the elimination inter-disciplinary courses and an overall dilution of the Economics Honours of programme. Flagging the dilution of inter-disciplinary courses in the new Economics syllabus, former dean of colleges and professor of History Nayanjot Lahiri, in a letter to the Head of the Economics Department, has said, “Since the new undergraduate programme is supposed to be inter-disciplinary, I find that this is precisely what has been sacrificed by the neglect of historical issues and perspectives.This is ironic because many history students of an earlier generation learnt their economic history at the Delhi School of Economics. This is also ironic because the profile of Delhi School has been enhanced in the public domain by it contributions in this field." The absence of a strong historical component, say teachers, will mean that ‘students will hardly know anything of our own past and the structures that we inherit from the colonial times, let alone anything about the industrial revolution in Britain or the development of Germany, Japan and the US as economic giants’. A common complaint from across departments has been the short period in which the new syllabus was asked to be designed by the administration. “Teachers were given between 2-4 weeks to completely overhaul the syllabus. If you are saying a four-system is better, how are you going to achieve that that if somehow you trying cut and paste parts of the old system to fit into the new. How is this more beneficial to students?” asks Mathur. The teachers are demanding a ‘complete rejection’ of the new economics course structure and a ‘general body meeting to formulate a new structure and democratic participation of all teachers to formulate a detailed syllabus of each course, as per the convention in the Department of Economics’.