Delhi University will be putting forward a new course, i.e. Bachelor in Science (B.Sc) Honors in Environmental Studies from the next academic session, 2021. Around six colleges from DU gave a go- ahead to this introduction of the course, as per Professor Radhey Shyam Sharma from the Department of Environmental Studies, Delhi University.
Each college is supposed to extend a minimum of 24 seats to at most 32 seats for the course. This indicates that there will be around 144 new UG seats for the course from the upcoming academic session. Till now, the university offered only Masters or PhD Programmes but not an Undergraduate programme in the course. The University Grants Commission (UGC) gave a green light for its introduction earlier, and is presumed to be put into practice next year, i.e. 2021-22, given the interest from various colleges.
The selection procedure of the EVS course has not been brought to conclusion yet. Most undergraduate courses require that the marks of ‘best of four’ class 12 subjects meet their cut-off requirement, whereas honours courses require that the best four subject includes one major. This is unlikely for B.Sc (Hons) Environmental Science, since most schools don’t offer the same subject as an elective at the senior secondary level.
It has been observed that every year most of the applications in the Delhi University come from students studying in CBSE affiliated schools. In the academic year 2019-20 too, more than 70 percent applications were from CBSE students. From a total of 2.70 lakh student applications to DU in 2019 for UG courses, two lakh were from CBSE-affiliated schools.
As per UGC guidelines, the three-year course will have 140 credits spread over 26 papers. Students will have to pass eight electives and four ability enhancement courses. Of the latter, two will be skill enhancement papers in the entire six-semester duration.
