DU’s META College – Say What?!

The word “Meta College” sounds kind of cool. But since last year, I’ve been trying to figure out – what exactly is it? The only META I’m familiar with are META tags in blogging. Nothing close to what it means in case of Higher Education, right?

A quick Wikipedia search tells us that Meta is a prefix meaning "beyond". It carries a sense of self-reference, for example metatags are tags describing tags. So does that mean metacollege is college about college?! Huh??!!

Honestly I wasn’t able to figure out why it’s called Meta College. Yes, there is some limited, far-in-the-horizon sense to it, but why so complicated? But then again, DU’s Vice Chancellor recently said in an interview that we must focus on the content rather than the nomenclature (I’m paraphrasing.) Basically, there’s an organization called Cluster Innovation Centre (CIC) that aims to look at education from a new perspective. Most probably, it was their idea. Students will be allowed to mix and match the topics they want to study and thereby are able to design their own four-year degree. The degrees will include BTech in Humanities @ Meta College and Masters in Mathematics Education @ Meta University. And I swear, that’s exactly how they’re mentioned on the CIC website. So before you start freaking out, lose all hope and start gulping down buckets of ice-cream because you didn’t get your coveted course, give this a glance!