New Delhi: The Delhi University (DU) has revived its earlier practice of admitting students based on Class 12 marks for specified courses across at least 31 colleges, after thousands of undergraduate seats remained vacant following several rounds of admissions based on Common University Entrance Test (CUET) scores.
The move comes after DU released its latest admission numbers on 25 August, showing 13,433 vacant undergraduate seats across 67 colleges.
The vacancies are also mostly concentrated in reserved categories. Of the 13,433 vacant seats, 10,438 (77.7 percent) are Other Backward Classes-Non-Creamy Layer (OBC-NCL), Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Economically Weaker Section (EWS) seats.
OBC-NCL accounts for 4,133 vacancies, followed by ST at 2,476, SC with 2,038 and EWS with 1,791. ST seats, in particular, account for 18.4 percent of all vacancies.
The scale of the vacancies is considerably larger than last year when more than 9,000 UG seats remained vacant after all rounds, including the mop-up round which is an additional admission round held after the regular seat-allocation process to fill unoccupied seats.
This year, the DU has not held a mop-up round. Instead, it has allowed colleges to admit students to selected programmes based on their Class 12 marks.
From 1 September, the relaxation will be extended to all DU colleges, which will be allowed to use Class 12 scores to fill their remaining vacant seats.
At least two colleges on the outskirts of Delhi—Bhagini Nivedita College in Najafgarh and Aditi Mahavidyalaya in Bawana—began admitting students based on Class 12 marks in the first week of August after seeking and receiving permission from the university.
The decision has raised a larger question: despite receiving a huge number of applications, with 1.9 lakh students registering for 71,600 seats, why are thousands of seats still going vacant?
Where are vacancies concentrated
An analysis of DU’s data shows that the vacancies are heavily concentrated in some colleges. Bhagini Nivedita College has the highest number of vacant seats at 843, followed by Swami Shraddhanand College (773), Aditi Mahavidyalaya (650), Shyama Prasad Mukherji College for Women (467) and Kalindi College (464).
Together, these five colleges account for 3,197 vacancies, or nearly one-fourth of all vacant undergraduate seats, as on 25 August. The pattern broadly follows the university’s traditional hierarchy of college preferences.
Vacancies are significantly higher in several colleges outside the North and South Campus, while popular institutions have relatively smaller vacancy pools. Hindu College, for instance, has 28 vacant seats and SRCC just three, while Hansraj and Kirori Mal also have considerably smaller vacancy pools.
DU Registrar Vikas Gupta, however, said the vacancies are largely concentrated in colleges and courses that have traditionally attracted fewer students.
“For example, language courses have been seeing fewer takers for the last several years. It is the same under CUET. Similarly, off-campus colleges also tend to see lower admissions, as students, particularly those from outside Delhi, prefer colleges located in the North or South Campus. So, CUET has not created these vacancies,” he told ThePrint.
Gupta said CUET had, in fact, expanded access to sought-after colleges by allowing students who did not necessarily score 100 percent in Class 12 to compete for admission.
“Many students have performed well in CUET and secured admission to top colleges even if they did not have 100 percent marks in Class 12,” he said.
CUET’s centralised admission system
College officials offer a different explanation. They point to the centralised admission and “upgradation” system, under which students can move to a higher-preference course or college when a seat becomes available. They argue that while students moved between colleges even before CUET, the scale of movement was smaller.
The principal of a college with one of the highest numbers of vacancies told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity that colleges previously lowered their cut-offs by one or two percentage points, allowing students to shift between institutions without the large-scale churn seen under the current system.
“Colleges would lower their cut-offs by one or two percentage points, leading some students to take admission there and cancel their admission at another college. But now, under the centralised system, a large pool of students moves after every allocation and upgradation cycle,” she said.
According to her, this creates vacancies particularly in less sought-after colleges and those located in far-flung areas. The experience of individual colleges illustrates the extent of this movement.
At Dyal Singh College, around 1,900 students were admitted against 2,045 seats in the first round, but around 800 subsequently left.
“Similarly, in the second round, we completed 2,100 admissions, and again around 800 students left. That is how we kept getting vacancies,” said Madhurendra Singh, the college’s admission nodal officer.
At Bhagini Nivedita College, around 670 of its 986 seats were filled in the first admission round. But after subsequent upgrades, almost all these seats became vacant, according to a senior college official. “Therefore, we requested DU to allow admissions based on Class 12 marks. Students don’t want to join off-campus and colleges on the outskirts,” the official said.
But the official also pointed to another factor: the changing pool of students who are able to access the admission process.
“We did have vacancies earlier too, but we managed to fill a larger number of seats by lowering the cut-offs and admitting students from nearby areas. A large number of our students also come from rural areas. Now, many of these students are either not aware of CUET or are unable to clear the exam,” the official said.
The argument is particularly significant in light of the category-wise vacancy figures. With 77.7 percent of the remaining seats belonging to the OBC-NCL, SC, ST and EWS categories, the question is not simply whether students want to attend these colleges, but whether the existing admission system is reaching the students for whom many of these seats are reserved.
However, the vacancy figures alone cannot establish that CUET was responsible for these students being left out.
Faculty members nevertheless question whether the system has created a new barrier.
“CUET was introduced to give a level-playing field to students, but adopting different gateways for admission will create further confusion. Now, in the same class, some students will come through CUET and others on the basis of Class 12 marks. How is this a level-playing field? If this is not a failure of CUET, then what is?” asked Rajesh Jha, a DU professor and former member of its Executive Council.
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Mismatch between what DU offers & what students want
The college-wise pattern is only one part of the story. The course-wise data points to another possible mismatch—between the programmes DU offers and what students increasingly prefer.
Among individual courses, B.A. (Hons.) Hindi has the highest number of vacant seats at 1,455, followed by B.Com with 937 and B.A. (Hons.) Sanskrit with 911.
The large number of vacancies in Hindi and Sanskrit suggests weaker demand for some traditional language programmes. But the pattern is not restricted to colleges with large overall vacancy pools.
Even sought-after colleges have vacancies concentrated in these programmes. At Gargi College, Hindi and Sanskrit together account for 60 vacant seats; at Indraprastha College for Women, the two language honours programmes account for 81; and at Lady Shri Ram College, they account for 10.
The trend is also visible in B.A. Programme combinations involving languages. At Bharati College, 14 seats are vacant in Sanskrit + History and 18 in Punjabi + History. At Daulat Ram College, Sanskrit + Music has 13 vacancies, while Hindi + Physical Education has 10.
While DU maintains that many of these programmes have traditionally attracted fewer students, Mithuraaj Dhusiya, a professor at Hansraj College and a member of DU’s Executive Council, said these seats were filled in earlier years.
“If DU is saying that these courses were traditionally not getting filled, it should make the data from the last five to 10 years public,” he said. “The reality is that CUET has become a barrier to underprivileged and local students, who would earlier come and take admission in many such courses and colleges.”
But the vacancy problem cannot be explained entirely by declining interest in language programmes. B.Com alone has 937 vacant seats across DU colleges, making it the second-highest course by number of vacancies.
A principal of a South Campus college said this should prompt DU to examine whether the curriculum and relevance of some generic undergraduate programmes need to be reviewed.
“Even the latest NITI Aayog report has highlighted weaker employability outcomes for generic undergraduate degrees such as B.A. and B.Com compared with professional courses. Vacancies in these courses add up to total vacancies,” he said, requesting anonymity.
The NITI Aayog report does not suggest that students are simply abandoning these degrees. But it points to a broader pattern about the employability and labour-market relevance of generic undergraduate education, particularly when students have increasing access to professional and skill-oriented alternatives.
Is switching to Class 12 marks helping?
The initial response from colleges that have been allowed to admit students on the basis of Class 12 marks has been encouraging. Dyal Singh College, for instance, has received 602 applications for 270 vacant seats.
“The majority of the students applying are those who could not clear CUET or were not aware of it. Now, at least, they have an option to seek admission. We are expecting all other colleges to see positive results,” said admission nodal officer Madhurendra Singh.
At Aditi Mahavidyalaya, officials said many local students had already taken admission through their Class 12 marks, although they declined to provide figures while the process is underway.
However, with the academic session already underway since late July, it remains to be seen how many of these vacant seats the Class 12-based admission route will ultimately fill.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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