When seats in most Delhi University colleges appear elusive, it may be a wise idea to consider the evening colleges while looking for admission. With lower cutoffs but same infrastructure as the morning colleges, the 10 evening colleges have gained popularity in the last few years. Since classes in these colleges usually begin after 2pm, they make for an ideal option for those who wish to earn while they learn. With several university toppers and prizes in their kitty, many evening colleges are all set to polish their image and attract good students.
According to Deepak Malhotra, principal of Dyal Singh College (evening), the first evening college – Camp College – in the city was started for the refugees from Pakistan who worked during the day. That college was dismantled in 1959 to form Dyal Singh (evening), Zakir Husain (evening), DAV College (evening) and Deshbandhu (evening).
"Today we are one of the best in art and cultural activities and our results have shown that there is no difference between morning and evening colleges in academics or infrastructure. Last year, one of our students topped in the university in English and we also won the maximum number of prizes in various inter-college competitions," said Malhotra.
"Even in the year before that, three of the top 10 students in the university belonged to the college. We get students from all popular schools. We also offer vocational courses like travel and tourism and have more seats than the morning college. It's not at all true that only those with poor marks join evening colleges. It's only the perception of the elite," added Malhotra.
Though some evening colleges may still not have good infrastructure or academic record, their teachers are selected in the same way as for the morning colleges. "The qualification of the teachers in our college would be as good as the teachers in any sought-after college. The selection criteria for teachers is same," said Dinesh Varshney, who teaches at Moti Lal Nehru (evening) college and is also deputy dean of students' welfare in south campus. “Earlier, evening colleges did not get students till the second or the third cutoff list. We used to sit idle during the admission season. But now we fill up a large number of seats after the first cutoff list itself, and that too in humanities courses besides BCom and BCom (honours),” Varshney said.
He added that the cutoffs in evening colleges are usually lower by 5-10% in most courses and this acts as an incentive. “Several outstation students who live alone here join evening colleges so that they can work in the mornings. We have a lot of students who work in call centres, coffee shops in shifts,” Varshney said.
