Varsity moots orientation for English lecturers

Proposal for conducting exams at college level fails to garner support

Informing the Academic Council about the impending NAAC team visit, which will happen towards the end of March, vice-chancellor of University of Mysore V G Talawar said the university was confident of making it through the assessment procedure.

This was shared at the meeting held at Crawford Hall here on Saturday with some crucial decisions taken in the interest of students who were finding English tough nut to crack.

One of the decisions was to organise orientation classes for permanent and guest lecturers in English in undergraduate colleges coming under its jurisdiction to equip them with the requisite skills to be effectively able to handle the subject and impart it to students.

What prompted the decision was the fact that many students failing in English paper in the fifth semester examination of BA (English major). Mincing no words, VC Talawar said the faculty members have been unable to attract students to English classes. Perhaps, they need skills and the university will train them in phases, he said.

Council member E C Ningaraju expressed concern over 80 per cent students failing English paper and said evaluators had to keep the interest of students in mind.

“Stringent evaluation will harm the future of students,” he said. His views were met with a bit of disagreement by another member Arun Kumar who said evaluation should reflect high standards of university and it should not be compromised upon. However, steps to ensure improvement in English teaching in colleges should be taken up, he suggested.

Registrar (evaluation) B Ramu said there were complaints that teaching in English language was ‘weak’ and all necessary measures will be taken to improve the quality of teaching.

Exams

A majority of the members at the meeting expressed their disagreement to conducting semester examinations of first and second year undergraduate courses at college level to ease the burden on the university, and this be mentioned on the marks card too. B Shivaraj, dean, faculty of commerce, who made this suggestion, said Pune University has introduced this system. However, the suggestion did not find takers who argued that the sanctity of examination system may be eroded and credibility of the university will be at stake if colleges were allowed to conduct examinations, they said. The suggestion was opposed by student representatives present at the meeting, as well. Talawar promised to discuss the matter with principals of colleges and bring it back for discussion.

‘Outsourcing’ makes noise

After initiation of a discussion on outsourcing of examination and related works where data had to be entered into computers, Talawar said the work was outsourced owing to reasons that we have independent examination system and not many skilled engineers have come forward for designing our own software. “I have interviewed about 39 engineers and offered them a starting pay of Rs 40,000 per month. Despite this, we are not getting skilled hands even for interviews,” he added.

Marks card scam

With some of the members demanding to know the names of those who were accused of having played a crucial role in the scam, Registrar Ramu said a departmental inquiry had been ordered against two employees in the examination section of the university in connection with the incident.