DU is Best University for undergraduate, postgraduate and research, says ARSD Principal

Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College (ARSD) Principal Dr. Gyantosh Kumar Jha tells us about the various courses offered at the college, what are the challenges and opportunities of being the Principal of the ARSD college and how CUET exam has changed the admission process. Read here to know more.

Shiksha spoke to the Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College (ARSD) Principal Dr. Gyantosh Kumar Jha. He spoke about the courses and environment offered at this DU college, and how CUET exam has changed the entire admission process, read here the excerpts from the interview.

Q: Tell us something about ARSD College. What are the challenges and opportunities of being the Principal of ARSD College of DU.

A: As the Principal of ARSD college, there are many challenges as well as opportunities because every college has some challenges and opportunities. Similarly, the challenge at our institute is that the students come to our institute from various backgrounds and mostly from rural backgrounds from NCR and nearby states. So, these students have issues with their communication skills which is definitely a challenge which we are dealing with and we are working on it for few years. Second, right now we don't have hostels, so we need to make hostels especially for girls and for students from outside Delhi. Another challenge is right now we don't have any big auditorium as it is under construction. Fourth, as NEP is implemented and we are implementing it since last year, there are so many new things in NEP which give new challenges, which we keep on handling.

Also, people had a perception about this college that it is not a very reputed college, and not very good student comes here. So, it was also a challenge. However, I have handled it in the last 6 to 7 years. This year from 0.22 to nearly 40% in NIRF ranking, and there is still scope for improvement. Now, research is also included at the graduation level so we also need to level up the infrastructure of the college. However, there are also so many opportunities, because I feel that our college had so many opportunities in which work was not done properly. We started searching for our strengths like in research, we have lots of scopes, and we work a lot in this field. We have the highest score in research at Delhi University. The undergraduate research which is now included in the NEP, we are doing for the last 6 to 7 years, our undergraduate students write research papers in good journals with good citations.

Our location is also one the best opportunities for us as the college is on Ring Road, and well connected, two metro stations are nearby. There is diversity in the college as students come from all over India to our college. Gender equity has also improved as compared to earlier. We have created a lot of societies, and we have adopted three villages including the slum. We help them in education and all other types of work like we contact MCD for cleaning in their areas. We run programs related to addiction and drug, and computer education programs.

We have also collaborated with the stakeholders of the three villages (One is from Uttarakhand and 2 from UP) we have adopted to develop a portal with the name Mera Gaon. We provide all government schemes on one platform for them so that they can get all information in one place. We will also send our students to these villages to do programs.

We also have a theatre for students interested in theatre. Bollywood actor Rajkumar Rao is our alumnus. There is a new actor Amir Khan who has recently worked with Ajay Devgan in a film and is also from here. Our students are going to NSD and IFT Pune. Every year, we are training two groups and provide approx 45 days long certificate course in theatre. We hire experts from outside to train them and provide production-oriented workshops. We also organise a theatre festival every year at the Sri Ram Centre of Mandi House. It is for four days, for two days the students who have taken training performs and third day we conduct a competition at all DU level.

Q: Is there a change in the admission process this year?

A: No, last year the admission process changed but not this year. In fact, I am a member of that committee also, there is no change. Whatever the policies were adopted last year, this year it will continue.

Q: How CUET has changed the admission process for DU colleges?

A: CUET has changed the admission process because now even students from distant places got a chance to join DU colleges. Everything is online, they fill out the form online and after they get selected, they study at Delhi University. The entire process is online. Earlier, students were getting admission on the basis of marks but now on the basis of CUET.

Earlier, the students who had scored well in CBSE, only get the chance. However, whenever it is based on the entrance exam, many distant students also join. Now, it is a big change due to CUET exam. Many such students from Delhi who got good marks in CBSE are not getting good scores in the CUET entrance exam but those children who have studied in villages or rural areas, and come from small towns, they are able to qualify for the exam.

Q: What makes DU the best choice?

A: DU is the best university in the country for undergraduate, postgraduate and research. The facilities, infrastructure, peer group, number of courses, choices and classes are taken very seriously. It provides holistic development to the students as they get good exposure. We especially, our motto is holistic development.

We also provide placement in ARSD to many pass-outs from our college, around 200 students get placed in ARSD every year. This time it has touched 300. We also provide skill-based training.

Q: Which are the courses offered at ARSD college and tell us about seat numbers in these courses.

A: Every course has different sanctioned strengths, in English honours, Hindi honours, Arts courses, Economic honours, political science honours, and History honours. In political science, and Economic honours the sanctioned strength is 96 each, and in Hindi, English and History, the sanctioned strength is 49. In the BA programme we are providing multiple choices this time, it is a two-discipline course, so students along with Hindi can go for any of the political science, history, maths, and economics.

Q: Are you planning to introduce new courses and increase the fees of the existing courses?

A: No we are not increasing fees right now, and no new course will be opened this year. If we will get approval from the university and UGC then we would like to introduce some new courses.

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