The overall proposed structure of semester-based teaching is as follows:
(i) Honours Courses
• For every course there will be four papers per semester. Credits will be
granted as per the scheme given in Appendix–2.
• For papers which have practical component, additional credits will be
available on the basis of time spent in the laboratory. Credits will also be
available for the tutorials. (Appendix–2).
• An undergraduate 3 year degree will therefore, have 4 X 6 = 24 papers, with
96 lecture based credits for classroom teaching and a maximum of 24
credits for the tutorials (wherever applicable) and upto 48 credits for
practicals (wherever applicable).
• Out of the 24 papers, 14-15 papers should be from the Main subject in
which the Honours degree will be awarded.
• A minimum of 6 papers will be required for the mention of the subject as a
Minor subject on the degree certificate. Papers of the Minor subject will be
chosen from the papers already available in that subject.
• There shall be 3-4 elective papers. Of these, 1 paper in Languages and 1
paper in Computational Techniques shall be compulsory.
• All students will study one additional paper on Environmental Studies (EVS).
• As an example, if a student chooses Maths (Hons.) with Economics as a
Minor, a minimum of 14-15 papers will be required in Maths, 6 papers in
Economics and 3-4 elective papers. The Minor subject papers will be
adopted from the papers offered by the Economics department for
Economics (Hons.) students. In the same way, a Maths (Hons.) student
taking a paper in Microeconomics will take the same paper that is taken by
Economics (Hons.) students in Microeconomics.
• As a consequence, no new papers need to be created. Existing papers will
however, have to be modified. Some of the papers may have to be
dropped. This will also be an opportunity to update some of the papers.
The emphasis in undergraduate teaching would be more on developing
core competence and clarity in key concepts. Areas of specialization and
advanced papers can be dealt with at the Master’s level.
• Whether a course has been taken as part of the Major subject or the Minor
subject, the examination paper will be the same for all the streams.
As an example, the paper ‘Principles of Economics’, and its examination,
whether a part of the B.Sc. (Hons.) Economics degree or a part of the Minor
subject with Maths (Hons.), will be the same and will be organized by the
Economics Department. Similarly, papers in Maths for the Minor subject
with Economics (Hons.) will be conducted by the Department of
Mathematics.
• A survey conducted amongst the postgraduate students of different
subjects has shown the preferences of students in terms of the Minor
subjects which they would have liked to study along with their honours
Major. While the list was extensive, choices that are most prominent are
summarized in Appendix–5.
• For papers which are highly subscribed to, additional sections will have to
be created to maintain a proper teacher student ratio.
(ii) B.A. (Programme)
• There shall be 4 papers in each semester, thus making a total of 24 papers
similar to Honours courses.
• There shall be 3 subjects of 6 papers each and the remaining 6 papers shall
comprise of Foundation courses, Application courses and Computational
Techniques.
• Of the 3 subjects two will be electives and the third subject will be
Language with 3 papers each of English and MIL.
(iii) B.Sc. (Programme)
• There shall be 4 papers in each semester, thus making a total of 24 papers
similar to Honours courses.
• There shall be 6 papers each of 3 Science subjects.
• The remaining 6 papers shall be interdisciplinary including Computational
Techniques and English.
(iv) B. Com (Programme)
• There shall be 4 papers in each semester, thus making a total of 24 papers
similar to Honours courses.
• There shall be 10 papers of Commerce, 6 of Economics, 4 of Languages and
4 interdisciplinary.
Assessment and admissions in advanced courses:
• The present mid-term examination and final examination will be replaced
by semester-end examinations. There will be centralized time-bound
marking and all the members of the teaching fraternity will be involved in
the examination process.
• Assignments, both written ones and presentations, will be an integral part
of every paper. The number of assignments, however, will be reduced so as
to make them more meaningful in terms of learning experience.
• As a general policy, postgraduate departments will be required to admit
50% of their students from the Honours courses on the basis of marks. For
the other 50% seats, there will be entrance examination. Students with a
Minor in a subject will be eligible to do a Master’s in the undergraduate
Minor subject if they clear the entrance examination.
 

The following scheme of action is proposed for the implementation of the
semester system:
Step 1 To begin with, small Subject Committees will be constituted for each
subject with the Head of the Department at the University serving as
Chairman of the committee to convert the existing course structure into a
semester mode. The structure will be organized in a format given in
Appendix–6. This will be Scheme 1.
E-mail ID of the Chairman of each Subject Committee will be hosted on the
University website for receiving suggestions. Deliberations of the Subject
Committees will be regularly notified on the website and also sent to the
colleges to receive suggestions in a continuous manner.
Step 2 The Subject Committees will identify the papers in the Major subject that
can be deleted or reduced in content and/or merged to accommodate the
papers of the Minor subject. Boxes with the Major subject papers will be
filled, boxes allotted to the Minor subject will be kept empty. This will be
Scheme 2.
The best strategy will be to directly go to Scheme 2, skipping the
preparation of Scheme 1.
Step 3 The papers available with a department will be exchanged with related
departments so as to allow departments, through mutual consultations, to
identify the most relevant courses for the Minor course slots. This will be
represented as Scheme 3.
Step 4 Preparation of Scheme 1, Scheme 2 and Scheme 3 should be concluded in
January 2010 and the syllabi will be sent to the Statutory Committees for
consideration by the AC and EC.
The entire process would be completed by March 2010.
Step 5 In case some of the departments, due to inconclusive discourse are not
able to work on schedule, semester system will be implemented in these
cases as in Scheme 1. Such departments will have to continue to work till
they come to a consensus on Major/Minor combination by 2011.
Interdisciplinarity through Major/Minor combinations— Why can we do it
and why should we do it?
1. University of Delhi is the leading university of India. It is a comprehensive
university as it teaches a very wide breadth of subjects including most
‘Liberal’ education subjects and many ‘Professional’ subjects. The
university has both the intellectual capital and the necessary funding to be
amongst the best universities at the national and global level.
2. A major bottleneck in achieving excellence is the huge dimension of the
university. However, this also provides us economies of scale in terms of
Library resources, instruction materials and lower fee structures.
3. The university has undertaken many new reforms like Scholarships to all
the Ph.D. students, Teaching Assistantships, Research Grants for the
postgraduate level faculty, subscription to major data bases and journals,
new equipment for research and practical work in the colleges. A major
initiative for teacher training/interaction and student learning has been
taken by setting up the Institute of Life Long Learning (ILLL). A semester
system has been implemented at the postgraduate level and major syllabus
revisions have been carried out in some of the postgraduate courses. All
this demonstrates that we can innovate if we resolve to do it.
4. Interaction with faculty colleagues teaching at the undergraduate level at
the ILLL has shown that there is enormous talent available in the colleges of
the University. The talent needs to be tapped for more incisive teaching
and mentoring of the students.
5. A total of Rs. 436 crores (Non-Recurring) and Rs. 883 crores (Recurring for
five years) have been sanctioned by the UGC for the UGC maintained
colleges for OBC related expansion. The University has worked very hard to
garner resources for the expansion of facilities at the colleges. A large
number of Colleges have received approval of the regulatory agencies for
construction work. A list of priorities was developed after extensive
discussion. In the next two years, many more facilities will be available at
the colleges.
6. Due to years of neglect, universities in India including our University stood
depleted. The Government of India in the XI Plan has shown significant
interest in higher education. Many committees have produced reports
outlining the direction in which higher education should move which
include recommendations of the Knowledge Commission, Action Plan for
Academic and Administrative Reforms by the UGC, Restructuring Post-
School Science Teaching Programmes by the three most important Science
Academies of India and the Yashpal Committee, to name a few. These
committees have provided guidelines after very wide consultations and
have strongly recommended improvements in undergraduate teaching,
through interdisciplinarity in teaching and emphasis on understanding the
fundamentals while discouraging rote-based learning. The University of
Delhi should be at the forefront in accepting some of the well thought out
and pertinent suggestions.
7. The suggested course structure for the semester system retains our time
tested and well recognized Honours System. However, there is reasonable
progress in terms of providing the students choice of a Minor to allow more
effective and relevant learning providing opportunities for students to
equip themselves in the interface areas, whether they choose teaching,
research, careers in industry or civil services.
It must be realized that every subject at the University of Delhi currently
has a Five year structure (3 year undergraduate and 2 year postgraduate).
Under the proposed scheme, subjects other than the main subject are only
being given 1 year teaching; 4 year teaching and learning is still available for
the main subject for those pursuing a Master’s programme.
The Committee looks forward to feedback from all the stakeholders on this
document. Faculty members, students, alumni and members of the Civil Society
are requested to send their comments, advice and suggestions on the
implementation of the semester system. The University is committed to a
continuous dialogue during the process of implementation of the semester system
at the undergraduate level.
Please send your feedback by e-mail to dusemester@gmail.com or by hard copy
to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Chairman, ECISS, University of Delhi, Delhi–110007,
preferably by November 20, 2009.