Hyderabad’s long standing and famous technical institution, The Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, (or better known by people across the country and academic fraternity by its acronym JNTU) has begun work on constituting a committee spanning several members with the aim to bring about far greater transparency with regards to the system of evaluation. This move was in reaction to the massive protesting done by the students of the government run University recently, these rallying students alleged that this system was a faulty one and needed to be changed post haste.
What is Being Done
A public university, JNTU is considered to be one among Indian’s leading universities for technical education in engineering as well as several other related disciplines. Jawaharlal Technological University is one of the oldest technical and scientific institutions recognized by the UGC and also one of the few to have been consistently been conferred with an ‘A’ grade in terms of accreditation by none other than NAAC, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council of India.
It is when one takes all this into consideration that we begin to understand why Hyderabad’s famed institution for technical studies was so aggressive to react to these allegations made by the protesting students. JNTU has in fact, released a statement which expresses their concern regarding students not being able to get through the examinations all together. The university claims to have their focus set clearly and conscientiously on the quality and aptitude of the engineering students who graduate from their pedagogy.
The students have made their case by filing with JNTU’s Vice-Chancellor a representation which rues how they have failed in one a particular paper despite answering each and every one of the questions appropriately. The students are also reportedly dissatisfied with the high fees demanded for re-evaluation of the papers by the university and have complained about the same as well. The students also have made demands regarding the notification for supplementary examinations by the university.
They demand that the University make clear notifications and announcements for these supplementary examinations including all details of their scheduling and process for registration immediately after the results for the re-evaluated papers come through. This they feel makes it easier for them to register for these exams and thus, perhaps make up for any papers which they were unable to clear at the earliest and could prevent many cases where students have been forced to repeat a whole year due to the bureaucracy of the university.
In response to this latest demand, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University issued a statement which said in clear terms that made the case saying the issue of notifications for supplementary examinations after the declaration of the results of re-evaluation is in itself a considerable time-consuming process and would in turn cause noticeable delays in the conduction of various university conducted programmes throughout the academic year. This is something that has not gone along well with the students as it appears to be just lip service as the reasoning has been thrown out by them as being flawed and general diversion tactics.
The notification which JNTU issued claims that it is essential to the completion of the academic programme in a timely manner that the current schedule of examinations be followed without disturbance or alteration. No delay can be accepted in the regular system of notifications for exams, not even for cases involving re-evaluations.