It has been exams back to back for thousands of engineering students, who were part of the old scheme and had backlog under the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU). Having been asked to clear backlogs from the old scheme as well as clear papers from the current scheme, these students have written over 16 examinations in three months.
Now, not confident of clearing all the papers, which would mean losing another year, and having failed to convince the VTU authorities, the students have started an online petition. They said that the delay in declaring re-evaluation results for the odd semester had created confusion and are now demanding that the year back and critical year concept be scrapped for the 2017-18 academic year. The petition has gathered over 12,000 signatures.
The year back system mandates that a student cannot go to the next year if he/she fails in four or more subjects. The critical year system states that students cannot enter third year if they do not pass first year papers or cannot enter final year if they do not clear second semester papers.
While all engineering students across semesters are affected owing to the delay on part of the university in announcing results, the worst affected are students who joined the course in 2014-15 and were part of the last batch that wrote the exam in the 2010 scheme and had a year back after the 2015-16 year. These students had to take up a seven-week crash course in December and write their fifth semester examinations in May and later write the sixth semester exams in June/July. This was done so that the students join their own batch as the university had started a Choice Based Credit System in 2015-16. As many as 11,600 students took the crash course as they could not enter the third and fourth year owing to backlogs.
Shravan Kumar, a student of Brindavan College of Engineering, who started the petition, said he had to write 11 papers and two practical exams between May and July. “I had to write my regular six papers and two practical papers of sixth semester in June and July and also five backlogs,” he said.
Karisiddappa, Vice-Chancellor, VTU, ruled out any review and said the crash course was introduced to give students an opportunity to clear backlogs.
Ravinandan B.B., vice-president of AIDSO, said the university should do away with the year-end system and the critical year concept particularly for the last batch of students.
