St. Stephen�s reduced annual intake

This is the first time when Delhi University has started its most talked about four-year undergraduate programmes. The top college, St. Stephen’s college has decided to cut-short the total annual intake of students claiming lack of infrastructure. The college governing body has taken this decision to reduce the total number of annual intake by 50 seats in bid to maintain a total strength of 1, 200 students on campus over three year.

However the university has not made any changes in the total number of intake for Honours students but it has planned to reduce the number of seats in BA and B.Sc programmes, which have been discontinued under FYUP, have been re-appropriated. This year the college will admit only 400 students instead of 450 this year. The remaining seats have been distributed between Economics and English Honours with former getting of 40 of the 50 seats, thereby increasing the economics course intake to 90 students.

This new decision is going to shatter the hopes of many aspirants, as the college administration thinks that the present infrastructure is inadequate for the extra year.

Nandita Narain, a teachers' representative in the governing body, said, "Without improving the basic infrastructure a four-year degree is impossible. Creation of two sections is not possible. Under the current structure, students are taught three or four papers. Under the four-year structure it will be seven papers in the first year-two honours, four foundation papers and one IMBH. For example, we now need 19 classrooms in mathematics. In FYUP, we will require 26 classrooms. We will use the BSc programme rooms. In history, the number of periods will increase to 26 from the present 14 periods per week".