‘JNU MAY SOON HAVE TWO TEACHERS FOR ONE STUDENT’

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High court on Thursday said with the recent UGC notification of tightening admission norms to the Mphil and PHD courses, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) may soon have 3-4 teachers for every student.

A bench of S Ravindra Bhat and Justice AK Chawla questioned the rationale of the university for taking 399 students over 500 teachers and said according to the figures, there would be two teachers per student.

“You have tightened your norms, so the intake has dried up. At this rate, JNU is going to be a unique university where there would be three to four teachers for every student. It is almost two teachers per student. What kind of logic is this? There is something wrong,” the court said.

The court’s remarks came on a plea challenging the UGC notifcation which had put a cap on the number of students per research supervisor .

Appearing for JNU, standing counsel for the Centre, Monika Arora informed the court that the teachers often go on sabbaticals and are working on their own books. However, the bench questioned this move, stating that on one hand they do not want to spend on the students and on the other hand, invest so much in “appointing the teachers who are living to live off the fat of the land”.

The court sought a breakup of actual and sanctioned strength of teachers in all 13 JNU schools and the number of students in them.