In a bid to clear the backlog and facilitate students in receiving their degrees, Delhi University is expected to issue digital certificates to those who have graduated between 2017 and 2019 within one month.
The varsity recently had awarded digital degrees to over 1.78 lakh students during its 97th convocation held on February 27.
First time
DU’s Acting Vice-Chancellor P.C. Joshi told The Hindu, “It was for the first time that such digital degrees were awarded to undergraduate and postgraduate students with the click of a button on the convocation day itself.
A ‘digilocker’ database has also been created to facilitate students to access their records.”
Academic records and marksheets of those who have graduated since 2017 have already been transferred to the digilocker database, senior DU officials said.
Elaborating on the digilocker database, D.S. Rawat, Dean (Examinations) of the varsity said, “It is a database where one can keep all academic documents. We have already transferred marksheets of those who graduated in the last three years. It got done around two weeks ago.”
Data for those who graduated between 2017-2019 have been readied for issuance of digital degrees, added Mr. Rawat.
Clear backlog
“Undergraduate and postgraduate digital degrees for those three years will be released soon. The data is ready. The printing of degrees of those who graduated in 2017 are also ready. Printing for the other two years are almost done and will be sent to colleges subsequently. This will help in clearing the backlog which has been accumulating over a long period of time,” said Mr. Rawat.
Adding that PhD degrees cannot be issued digitally due to the different thesis titles, Mr. Rawat said, “Our aim is that by the time the 2021 convocation arrives, we are ready with both the digital and printed degrees for that batch. It will eliminate the delay that students usually face in receiving their degrees.”
New forms for exam registration, seeking information like enrolment numbers, will also be issued in the upcoming semesters to ensure that anomalies in data collection can be rectified before the degrees are issued, officials said.
Will avoid lapses
“Earlier, we used to take data from colleges and at times there were a few lapses. However, in the new forms, students will have to fill out their enrolment numbers as well as their names in Hindi. The university usually requires these two things from respective colleges. The admit cards and marksheets issued will also have the same details. The fact that students will have to repeat this process every semester, by the time they graduate and degrees are issued, the process will ensure that all the details are correct and rectified if required,” explained Mr. Rawat.