Students left in the lurch

This is not the first time that students in the City are disappointed with the inefficiency of the Bangalore University. Delay has become a norm with the BU and this year, the delay in declaring the exam results of second as well as final-year students has hampered their career plans. While some are awaiting their results after re-evaluation, many other have a lost an entire year owing to blunders that the BU has made.

Manish Srini, who was studying BA Psychology, is extremely disappointed and yet to get over the fact that he has to wait for a year to get into a good college. “I was shocked to see that I was marked absent in my counselling psychology paper. It was not just me — many other students from my batch were marked absent. When I approached the BU with the problem, I was asked to wait. Finally, after two weeks, it revised the results on its website. In the meantime, I had applied to Madras University and they asked me for my mark sheets. I couldn’t produce my mark sheets on time as it had an
absent mark in one of the main papers. They rejected my application and now, I am left with no option but to wait for a whole year,” explains Manish.

He is not the only student who suffered the brunt of the delayed results. Many other students have also been affected due to the callous attitude of the university.

Rahul, a BCom student, is yet to get his results after re-evaluation and notes that many of his classmates were not satisfied with their results. It has been a long wait  for him — it’s been more than a month and he hasn’t got his results after the re-evaluation.

“I don’t know if we went wrong or there was an error while correcting the papers. But almost the entire BCom final-year batch from my college sent the papers of management accounting for re-evaluation. Many of us faced problems applying to different colleges. It has been almost two months and we haven’t been informed about the results,” he notes.
This is not the first time BU is slacking. Earlier, the exams for second as well as final-year degree students had been postponed causing chaos in their schedule.

Many of their exam dates clashed with the chartered accountancy papers and they were forced to opt out of the latter. Second-year degree students fear that they will face similar problems when they go to their final year.

Bhavik, a second-year student, informs that their fourth-semester results were delayed by a month and many of their seniors were marked absent in some of the subjects. “The results were delayed by a month and many students who had to take different exams could not take it as they had not got their results. We might have to face the same delay next year as the entire academic cycle goes for a toss once the results are delayed. Some of us, who want to apply to foreign universities, might not be able to do so,” he says.

Vice chancellor of Bangalore University, B Thimmegowda, informs that he is streamlining the entire process and is making an effort to arrange for evaluation to be done at the Central College campus as many evaluators don’t want to travel all the way to the Jnanabharathi campus.

“This entire delay was due to two custodians who did not give the Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) sheets on time. Some evaluators marked these papers as absent instead of Not Processed (NP). We are trying to assign the work of collecting these sheets to an agency and the responsibility of taking it from these agencies will also be assigned.

We are planning to enforce this new method on a rehearsal basis much ahead of time, so that students don’t face any problem from next year onwards. We will request the principals of various colleges to release the invigilators, who are also involved with evaluation, within the first ten days of the examination so that they can start the evaluation in time to avoid the delay,” he explains.