It’s official! Twelve science courses will finally be taught in the Delhi University under the semester system from the coming session. But some questions remain. Is it required? Are we ready for it? Can the infrastructure of this university manage the load of biannual examination?

I as a student do not know the politics and plans behinds this ‘revolutionary step’, but surely I too have certain views and opinions. First of all, the strength of the students in the DU is a very large number. Hence, biannual examination implies paper checking of more than 1.5 lakh students twice a year! At present, even when the final exams end in May the results cannot be compiled till July. Then how do the authorities expect the work of this magnitude to be done within a month, and that too twice a year?

Secondly, college life is a much-awaited phase in a student’s life and with the load of academics being planned in this way the growth of a student outside their classrooms would diminishes drastically as most of their time and energy would be consumed by academics. Hence, participation in extracurricular activities may not be probably as healthy as it should be.

Thirdly, the paper division over the semesters is a big worry amongst students. From a student’s point of view, the difficulty level and inter-relations between subjects is a very significant part of learning. It may happen that two related papers are split in two semesters and the help one gets from doing them together then becomes absent.

The good part of this system is the redesigning of the course structure, the concept of main papers and minors for the students to be aware of their own subject of study as well as other related fields. This will broaden the scope of learning and career options for future. But the drawback still remains, that we should not blindly adopt the western system of education without realising that the same concept  may not be valid or suitable for our sort of system and set-up.

In the end, after expressing my views about the semester system in the DU, I would really hope that if it is surely going to be implemented, then all the flaws should be taken care of beforehand. Also, the steps should be planned in the best interests of the students. If designed and implemented well, this system might be successful in making DU competent enough to compete with international universities and take it to newer heights.