Why admission to DU is not worth the craze

The class 12 results are out, and the cut-offs for Delhi University (DU) colleges will make headlines again this year in a matter of days. Tens of thousands of students will be eagerly waiting with their 90, 95 per cent or more marks, wondering if they will get their favourite course in their favourite college, and if not, what option in what college will it be?

After all, DU attracts the crème de la crème of the Indian student crowd. It is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in India, some colleges more so than others, and even vice-president Hamid Ansari recently said that DU should be seen as a benchmark for all other universities in India.

It is this impeccable image of DU that brings so many of India's brightest in such a fierce competition, and chances are, stresses at this point are running high. The future might seem to be wrapped up in marks that are exchanged like a cheque for a great university brand name and education, failing which all hopes, aspirations, and most importantly, the hours put in before the exams, all seem to be a waste.

Also read: Why DU colleges must start with reasonable cut-offs

This results in a lot of students attaching all their tender aspirations to this university, which begs an honest assessment of just how great the great Delhi University really is. Before the student fills in his/her form and enrols in DU, here's what he/she can expect from the institution and his/her education here, according to my three years spent in the university over the course of my Masters in English.

I enrolled in DU in 2013, following undergraduation in an Engineering college where, predictably, virtually no one wanted to be an engineer and a job where, once again, no one wanted to be working. An aspiring novelist at heart, I arrived at DU with the starry-eyed perception that everyone doing a degree in the arts would somehow defy my prior experiences of job satisfaction.

I received my first shock when I came to know that the allotment of colleges was done on a first-come-first-serve basis for anybody who had cleared the exams regardless of the scores. It was a theme that was to repeat itself a lot in DU.

Also read: What DU cut-offs do to your family and relatives

Dealing with an archaic administrative infrastructure and, even more so, practices, simple matters of form-filling or declaration/verification of key information consistently proved very difficult for the average student. For example, even the admission form is issued in one place, signed in another, and then submitted in another.

The administrative departments seemed they had not heard of the internet and computers. All forms were manually filled and submitted; virtually no relevant information was available on the websites of departments or the university. For example, lecture notes or examination schedules, or even notices of internal assessment classes were notoriously difficult to find on the websites.

Add to that an administrative staff that is the picture of a government office. In my three years at DU, I did not meet a single non-teaching member of a department who looked interested in helping a student, be it with a form, a problem, or even the hostels.

In fact, stories of lunches lasting hours and staff missing from their posts are something that are taken as a given. When the staff are found, their commitment to their job could not be less frugal, while their dismissiveness and assertion of authority is paramount.

All in all, administration at DU is an opaque, inconsiderate and shadowy rot, but to top it all, it is also corrupt and lazy.

Admission to MA in a particular college or course often becomes a matter of knowing the right person instead of scoring the required marks. Same is the case with hostels, or the fate of any applications one might have with their department, college or university. The result is that every interaction with the administration invites with itself a dread that the task, however trivial, will be long and strenuous.

For all the pains of administration, the syllabus and, more often than not, the teaching-staff and excellent libraries provide a counter. The syllabus for most departments is thorough and diverse, and the teachers are capable when they are motivated. However, going by former St Stephen's College principal Valson Thampu's articles, motivation is in serious question on the teacher's part.

Even so, the students are tied to classes by archaic methods of teaching, where showing up to class is incentivised, but not really listening. It is the same way education is incentivised at DU, but not really learning - a difference Mark Twain was wise to point out, and DU has been loath to remember. Even term papers or assignments are corrected on the basis of attendance as if he/she who has not attended the requisite classes couldn't possibly produce anything of value.

As Thampu's articles point out, a better proposition would be to wonder if showing up to class produces anything of value. However, I feel that is not exactly the teachers' fault, for the students themselves by and large demonstrate little interest in the subject matter beyond the question paper.

During my MA I heard countless of my classmates reading everything for an exam - notes, readings etc - except the prescribed text they were supposed to comment on, not to mention the countless ones who I met doing an MA simply because they had done a BA. For a university that attracts only the cream, the students even in the Masters programme were just going through the motions in majority.

Never is this more clearly seen than in the political and social consciousness of the student body of the entire university. For all its reputation for its education, especially in the social sciences, students at DU display remarkable apathy to student politics, activism, or even political and social consciousness.

This is most clearly visible in the university's student union elections, where rape threats to female candidates are routine, campaigns don't even feature a debate amongst the candidates and at the most, nothing happens unless it is election time, at which point it becomes a game of muscle politics for financial gains and little else.

In fact, in my first year at Deshbandhu College, I had asked a candidate an uncomfortable question during election campaigning, against which all the veterans of Deshbandhu cautioned me since. Apparently that was not cool. As a result, the average student is disinterested in its politics, and disillusioned from the opacity and deceit, just looking to pass his/her exams and get a degree.

A part of this is made up for by the culture that grows around young minds trying to find themselves. In this regard, DU is perhaps one of the best places to study where you can be involved in theatre, music, art, or whatever may be your interest in easy, like-minded company. The environment, though sexist and more than a little racist, is not violent or vulgar except during the elections. Areas surrounding the university are excellent to live in, and vibrant in a free culture.

It is in these spaces that DU is a space for learning and growing, not for the environment for education it generates, but despite it. Aided by a great syllabus put in by a vision for education that has long since seemed to have lost itself in DU, ultimately all colleges and departments that seem to separate one's merit from another at the beginning of the admissions do not impart half as much learning as that of students interacting with each other and the world outside these barriers.