New Delhi [India], July 5 : The Delhi University Academic Council on Friday approved new guidelines for final-year undergraduate research and projects, even as faculty concerns over workload, funding, and unrealistic expectations.
The Academic Council, DU's top academic decision-making body, cleared the framework to regulate the dissertation, academic project, and entrepreneurship tracks being introduced in the final year of UG courses.
These guidelines were necessary as the first batch under the UGCF has now entered its fourth year. The proposal will now be presented before the Executive Council for final approval.
According to the approved guidelines, every student opting for one of the three tracks will work under a faculty supervisor.
Dissertations must be done individually, while academic projects may be pursued solo or in small groups. Entrepreneurship projects will require students to have studied two specific elective courses. Faculty members -- including those without PhDs -- will be eligible to supervise, with a maximum of 10 students per teacher, unless otherwise approved by the college's Research Committee.
A monthly progress report must be submitted to the Subject Research Committee, and every student must present their progress before an Advisory Committee for Research.
Each college is expected to form a three-tier research supervision structure: a College Research Committee (RCC), Subject Research Committee (SRC), and an Advisory Committee for Research (ACR).
Funding for student research may be sourced from internal college funds, alumni, CSR grants, or industry collaborations. Colleges must also maintain a research repository and ensure anti-plagiarism checks. Faculty are to undergo training in research supervision, and students will receive orientation on ethics and citation practices.
However, several elected members of the Academic Council, including Monami Sinha, Jitendra Meena, Anumeha Mishra, and Sanjeev Kaushal, submitted a note of concern, calling the proposal "flawed in both design and delivery." They argued that while the university expects high-level research outputs -- such as book chapters, Scopus-indexed articles, and patents -- it offers no institutional support on the input side.
"The University has made no attempt to rationalise direct teaching hours to include dissertation supervision, even as it keeps a very high demand on the output side," the note said.
The teachers pointed out that DU's own 2022 workload notification for postgraduate courses included supervision time in direct teaching hours -- and the same must apply at the UG level.
They also criticised the guideline allowing faculty to supervise up to 10 students.
"Even 3-4 is a stretch when you factor in classroom duties and administrative workload," said Dr Anumeha Mishra. Further, they questioned how faculty would mentor students with backlogs or poor academic performance if promoted to the research-intensive fourth year.
Clause 4 of the document -- which permits research funding from student welfare funds, college service charges, CSR or alumni -- drew strong opposition.
"This amounts to shifting the financial burden of NEP implementation onto students. Costly research infrastructure, particularly for science, must be publicly funded," said Dr Jitendra Meena.
The note also flagged a lack of lab staff and the absence of any plan to expand infrastructure or personnel.
The faculty members demanded revisions to committee structures, including the ACR, to make them more inclusive and feasible. They also objected to placing responsibility for plagiarism on faculty supervisors in an era of AI tools.
"This should be the student's responsibility and part of their academic assessment," they said.