I am writing about the recent "autocratic" changes done by our present Vice Chancellor (Prof. Deepak Pental). Being a physicist I will only focus on this issue from the viewpoint of a physicist working in Delhi University.
From last couple of year, the main physics department in DU is undergoing huge makeover. Firstly new M.Tech courses were floated by the dept. I completely fail to understand what the authorities had in mind while floating these courses. This introduction has completely ruined the structure of the department. The main physics dept. of DU had a golden past. The structure of the dept. (ever since it was conceived) was to focus on pure physics.I personally know a large fraction of the faculties in the physics dept. and with this knowledge I can say that this dept is incapable of holding such a professional course like M.Tech. I am sure DU stamp will (and has already) attracted students but let's be frank, the present faculties are incapable of teaching a professional course. I feel that this course will also meet the same fate as that of B.Sc. (H) computer science that was launched few years back and then scrapped. The present administrators of DU (including physics dept) have no vision of how things should be done. Some of the faculties of the dept. are incapable of teaching the basic courses (like what has happened in the Electrodynamics course last year). How can one expect such department to run specialised professional courses like M.Tech.
It is really very interesting how these so called jazzy courses are managed. The people who are teaching this courses are people of pure physics background without any experience (in student and professional life) of any professional courses. In addition dept. is also taking the help of some of it's retired people. In last few years DU has also recruited few faculties to undertake the responsibility of teaching in these courses. But I would like to note again that all the people recruited were from pure physics backgrounds. So these are the set of people who are responsible for these new courses.
In my future posts I will write more about these M.Tech courses and the restructuring of M.Sc. and B.Sc. courses that DU is presently undertaking........
