New headache for BU: Declaring distance education results

Delay affects admissions for new academic year; deadline extended thrice

After a series of delays in announcing the results of its regular examinations, Bangalore University (BU) is now struggling to declare the results of its distance education exams held last December. 

The delay has inevitably withheld the distance education admissions for the new academic year. 

The admissions for various distance education courses for the next academic year were declared open last September. But the deadline had to be extended thrice owing to the delay in announcing the results of the previous examinations. 

The most recent extension was granted last week and the new deadline for admissions is March 25. 

Sources in the distance education department conceded that new admissions had been affected by the poor examination management system. 

Unless the results of previous examinations are declared, students cannot enrol for the next academic year. As a ripple effect, the admission process for freshers has also been delayed. 

The university cannot afford to lose time in evaluation as the government recently issued guidelines for uniform academic calendar across all State universities. 

On his part, BU Vice-Chancellor Prof B Thimme Gowda says he is aware of the problem and the university is streamlining distance education. “By next year, everything will be set right,” he told Deccan Herald, promising speedy and stringent measures. 

Under distance education, nearly 55,000 answer scripts have to be evaluated, according to university officials. While the evaluation of regular exams has been computerised, the distance education evaluation is still done manually. Prof Gowda said the university was “at the mercy” of evaluators as far as distance education is concerned. 

“The problem is that many teachers skip the evaluation for regular courses itself,” he explained. “To rectify this problem, we had made it compulsory for affiliated colleges to take part in evaluation. But when it comes to distance education, colleges do not evince interest as they have no compulsion.” 

New assistant registrar 

To streamline the examination work, the university will appoint an assistant registrar exclusively for distant education, according to Prof Gowda. “We are also planning to hike the remuneration for evaluation so that lecturers are encouraged to volunteer,” he added. 

At present, lectures of UGC scale get a remuneration of Rs 750 per day and others Rs 900 for revaluation for regular courses. The remuneration for distance courses would have to match it, he added. Meanwhile, distance education exam results are likely to be announced in a week, said BU Registrar (Evaluation) R K Somashekar.