GGSIPU Admission Brochures: Time to change strategy and be a bit environment conscious?

GGSIPU was one of the earliest movers when Supreme Court of India directed all universities to include one environment studies related subject in the curriculum for engineering courses(in the academic session 2007-08, Environmental Studies subject was added in Semester 2 of B.Tech in place of Chemistry after the beginning of the semester). This might have made most of us believe that the university administration was gearing up to do its best to make the younger generation aware of its duties towards the environment which is deteriorating at a rapid pace due to reasons known to all. But all such hopes shatter when we pick up the brochures for admission to various courses(especially that of the most sought after courses, that is brochure 1 and 2 for professional and engineering courses respectively) offered by the university. The amount of information provided in those is too much, and only a few will be having the time to read it cover to cover when they are already busy preparing for various exams(boards/competitive). Just by using a little conservative approach, a large number of trees can be saved and also the university can significantly reduce the amount of money it has to spend in printing of these brochures. It isn't possible to scrap the offline application process completely because of low internet penetration in our country, but still some other steps are feasible to make the situation a little better.

First the university can reduce the number of pages and quality of paper used in the brochures. No one is going to keep that with himself for whole life, so there isn't any need to use glossy paper and colored printing, black and white printing on normal paper can do. Only most important information should be provided in the printed prospectus, rest can be provided online. For example, if we consider Admission brochure I , out of total 202 pages around 120(10-54 and 125-200) are devoted to information about various institutes offering advertised courses only. All this too promising information is provided by the Institutes only, so students can't rely on them but will need to consult existing students to decide whether to take admission in a particular institute or not which means that information can be easily omitted from the printed prospectus.

Second, the university can encourage more students to use the online application procedure by offering some incentives in the form of reduced fees. At present, the offline application form costs Rs. 1000 while online application costs Rs.100 more (ie Rs 1100) due to additional postage and handling charges making the later option less lucrative. It is happening when university spends a large amount of money for printing prospectus for offline mode of application, while in online mode, the applicant doesn't get any printed prospectus, and has to download the electronic version from the university website, translating into considerable savings for the university. Thus if the university reduces online application cost even by a small amount, it will be able to entice more students to apply the online way, resulting in saving a lot of resources(paper as well as money).

These are some of the steps which are possible to save a large number of trees. But for that we need that some people in the university come forward to take the initiative. Students too can contribute a bit for the cause by avoiding wastage of paper. The unused sides of A4 sheets used for making files can be used for doing rough work. Students from economically weaker background are already used to doing this, but those from well-off families need to be aware of the fact that whether the person using paper is rich or poor, same number of trees are required to be cut to get it!

More suggestions? Comments of all kinds are always welcome(Just remember, some etiquettes are to be followed while expressing yourself at public forums). So SPEAK UP :-)