Exam date clash baffles students

With the exams just around the corner, the students of Bangalore University (BU) are busy finishing their portions. However, this is not their only worry. BU students are fed up with the board making constant changes in the timetable for their examinations.

The timetable has been changed more than four times now. To make matters worse, now that the dates have been finalised, the board is refusing to issue hall tickets to the students as there are chances of the dates being shuffled yet again.

The problem is even greater for those who are pursuing BCom and charteredaccountancy (CA) courses from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) at the same time. “We have seven papers in the ICAI curriculum and the dates of six of these are clashing with the BCom exams.

All the universities in the City check the dates with the ICAI and then fix a timetable. But BU does not bother to do that. These exams not only fall on the same dates but are also at the same time. We don’t know what to do,” says a hassled Anusha, who is a third-semester student of Jain College.

BU had first declared that the examinations for the third-semester students would start on October 9. Soon, it was changed to October 18. Within a day, it was again changed to October 22 and BU officials confirmed this as the final date.

“Many colleges had decided to issue the hall tickets. But soon, we saw a notice in the paper on October 4, stating that the date for the examinations has been pushed to November 2.

According to the new timetable, two of our exams were going to be held on two consecutive public holidays and a couple of exams were to be held on a Sunday. When we called the board, the officials reprimanded us and told us that this was the final timetable. They said we could opt out of the exams if we did not want to follow it,” explains Pranathi, a second-year student.

The board has finally declared November 3 to be the date for the first examination for the third-semester BCom students. However, the hall tickets — which were scheduled to be distributed on October 16 — have not been issued yet.

Ramya, a final-year student, is frustrated and depressed as she has to miss a couple of the CA papers so as to write her BCom exams. “The constant changes in the timetable have made me lose my concentration. I have started and stopped preparations for the CA exams more than four times now.

Whenever the dates were announced, all of us went to check if the BCom exams clashed with the CA ones. If they did not clash, we started preparing for the latter. Now, we have lost all hope. Since the dates and times of the exams clash, we cannot write both. If we write our CA exams and miss the BCom ones, we will be held back this year. But we are final-year students and cannot take this risk.

The board should understand our plight and adjust the dates. Almost all the BCom students are CA students as well,” informs Ramya.

Students complain that the BU officials are not ready to listen to their problems, even when their principals are making an effort on their behalf.

“My evening college principal called the board and explained our problem. Instead of listening to our difficulty, they told him that the students should not enrol in the CA courses and that the BU will not change the dates,” informs Anusha.