New Delhi: In what will be a move that saves trees and cuts costs, Delhi University is likely to do away with the printing of its prospectus from the upcoming academic session.
The varsity, which enrolls 54,000 students every year in the various undergraduate courses being offered at its over 75 colleges, sells over 2.5 lakh prospectuses every year. “The prospectus, priced at Rs 100, used to be printed at the varsity's press. However, it has been recommended this year that there will be no printing of prospectus and the university will be able to save the printing cost” a member of the admission committee told PTI.
The DU prospectus will be available for download on the varsity's website.
The initiative has already been adopted by Jamia Millia Islamia University, which claims that it has saved on printing costs running into lakhs of rupees.
DU earlier used to sell the prospectus along with the centralised OMR form but, in case of online registrations, the fee was supposed to be paid online. The colleges used to sell their separate prospectuses, priced anywhere between Rs 100 and Rs 250.
“Though the colleges will be free to decide whether they still want to continue with the printed prospectuses, they have been directed to sell them only to those students whom they have enrolled and should not compel the seat aspirants to buy the same,” the official said.
While DU is also contemplating bringing the entire admission process online, concerns have been raised in several quarters whether there are enough servers in place to cope with the admission traffic.
Only the postgraduate admission registrations were so far being done online. For undergraduate admissions, both online and offline processes were available.
Although DU introduced centralised online registration forms for the first time in 2012-2013, it had continued with the offline centralised OMR registration forms. The varsity had appointed a 23-member committee last month comprising the registrar, deans of various faculties, principals of various colleges and its Academic and Executive Council members to look into the process of admissions for the various undergraduate courses for the academic session 2015-16.
The committee had earlier decided to bring the entire process online. However, in view of the suggestions received from various stakeholders, it has recommended that both online and offline processes be continued but the duration of the latter be reduced.
“Concerns have also been raised that students from economically-backward classes may not have access to the infrastructure for online registration. We have decided to set up computer counters at a few colleges to help these students,” the member said.
The committee had submitted its recommendations last week and the Vice Chancellor will take a final call on the same. Jamia, which used to offer both online and offline registrations since last session, went for an entirely online process this year.
“We received over 1.5 lakh applications for 6,000 seats, an increase of 25 per cent over last year. Printing of the prospectus has been done away with. By not having to print over 1.5 lakh prospectuses, we have saved lakhs,” said Jamia spokesperson Mukesh Ranjan.
Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has also launched online admissions from this session but will continue with the printing of prospectuses.
