A student of a first-year undergraduate programme at a leading Delhi University college has found out that many of his friends who had taken admission with him this year have dropped out in the last two months.

"At least 20 students have definitely dropped out. They mainly did not find the course to be beneficial. Students don't find the Value Added Course (VAC) and Skill Enhancement Course (SEC) to be contributing to their learning," said the student.

DU this year carried out three normal rounds of admission, one spot round, two mop-up rounds and one on-the-spot mop-up round. The university has not disclosed the number of seats vacant after all these rounds. While DU admits on the basis of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET), students were also taken in based on their board marks in the mop-up rounds.

Faculty members monitoring the admissions, however, said nearly 5,000 of the 71,000 seats in 69 colleges were vacant this year.

Rudrashish Chakraborty, a teacher at Kirori Mal College under DU, attributed the trend to the academic dilution of courses after the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP). Chakraborty cited the example of DU where the components of non-core subjects have increased in the name of skill enhancement, ability enhancement and value-added courses in the four-year undergraduate programmes (FYUP) or the Undergraduate Curriculum Framework (UGCF) introduced in 2022.

The NEP advocates the FYUP with options for entry and exit at the end of each year. A student can exit at the end of the first year with a certificate, at the end of the second year with a diploma, at the end of the third year with a degree and at the end of the fourth year with an honours degree.

Before the FYUP, the university had a choice-based credit system (CBCS) for the three-year undergraduate programme, which had courses totalling 148 credits. Under the CBCS, a student could pursue a major subject of 108 credits, a minor subject of 24 credits and an SEC and Ability Enhancement Course (AEC) of eight credits each.

Under the FYUP/ UGCF, a student would pursue courses for 44 credits each year over four years. The FYUP has introduced a VAC of 8 credits, retained the AEC of 8 credits and increased the credits in the SEC from 8 to 12. In the first two years, a student would study 24 credits from AEC, SEC and VAC courses of the total 88 credits. The remaining 64 are from the core subjects.

Chakraborty said in the name of the VAC, students are forced to take up courses such as The Art of Being Happy, Fit India, Yoga and Swachh Bharat. Under the SEC, they have to study courses like personality development and communication, widely seen as substandard. Under the AEC, students are forced to take up Hindi as an Indian language despite DU being the largest central university in the country, he said.

Abha Dev Habib, a faculty member at Miranda House College, said the vacancies were in several top colleges, a trend that had never been seen before the CUET was adopted in 2022.