The Delhi University (DU) has constituted a seven-member committee to study and discuss provisions related to the student-teacher ratio, days after Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh blamed the imbalance between their number for the slip in the National Institutional Ranking Framework's (NIRF) rankings.

The DU slipped by a spot to the 13th position this year in the Ministry of Education's NIRF rankings issued earlier this month.?The committee headed by DU Director South Campus Prakash Singh will also hold discussions on the size of the student groups for lectures, practicals and tutorials to ensure the optimal use of the varsity's facilities including lab equipment.

"The University of Delhi has constituted a committee to study, discuss and revisit provisions related to the student-teacher ratio and size of the student groups for lectures/practicals/tutorials," read the notification issued by the varsity.

The Delhi University is ranked behind city-based Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), which bagged the second and third positions, respectively, in the NIRF under the university category.?

Prakash Singh, the head of the newly-formed committee, said the body is an outcome of the NIRF ranking.?"These exercises are the outcome of that (NIRF) ranking. We have been publishing a lot. You will be surprised to know that our publication ratio is much more than our other universities but we are placed on the 13th. It is also an alarming situation for us," he said.

"We have been doing much better in other areas because of several reasons including perception and student-teacher ratio and because of faculty strength. We are somewhere below," he added.?

The committee will focus on improving the student-teacher ratio and ensuring facilities provided by the varsity are used optimally, told Prakash Singh

"The number of students in the varsity has increased owing to the rise in the number of seats due to the introduction of various kinds of reservations including OBC and EWS. But the university did not work on improving the student-teacher ratio. The focus of the committee would be to improve that ratio. Moreover, we will also focus on ensuring whatever facilities we have in our university are used optimally," he informed.?

Last year, the university was ranked 12th in the NIRF rankings, while it was ranked 11th in 2020, at the 13th spot in 2019 and ranked seventh in the university category in 2018.?

The Delhi University has scored 43.1 in teaching, learning and resources (TLR), a marginal improvement from last year when it had scored 42.65 in the same domain. However, it is way behind JNU and JMI which have a TLR of 71.94 and 68.17, respectively.

Speaking to PTI, DU VC Yogesh Singh had noted, "We will have to improve on the research factor. The low student-teacher ratio could be one of the reasons for the decline in rankings."

"We are in the process of hiring teachers, but the results will show in the next couple of years. Some changes might be visible the next year, but the actual results will only be seen in the next two years," he said.

(With PTI inputs)