JOIN USLess than half the syllabus covered in two months
Declaration of Lok Sabha polls has left students studying under University of Mysore (UoM) in a lurch, as, most of the gazetted lecturers and professors will be deputed to election duty, which will directly take a hit on the syllabus.
The new semester system under UoM commenced on January 13, and most of the colleges have not even completed half the portion of the syllabus so far. As a mandatory exercise, many of the gazetted officers lend their services to poll related activities.
Under UoM, there are about 194 affiliated colleges including Hotel Management, Speech and Hearing and Food Science. Colleges are situated in Hassan, Chamarajanagar and Mandya. The semester exams have been scheduled at the second week of May.
According to University Rules, colleges need to work at least 120 days per semester, but, due to many reasons, not even 45 days of classes have been held reveals S N Gayathri, Principal of Maharaja’s College. She conceded that so far only a small percentage of the portion had been covered.
Though the new semester started in January, lecturers who had evaluation duty started teaching only in the month of February. Some them officially quit classes to conduct or attend seminars and workshops.
“Though we thought of covering the portions in the month of March, it has now been affected because LS Polls duty,” she said.
She added that some of the working hours of lecturers were reserved for preparing question papers. On the other hand colleges have to conduct Internal Assesments, practical exams, college events like fests and farewell programmes. “The principals of all colleges often have brought this problem to the notice of UoM. But, nothing has done so far,” she added.
Gazetted staff from colleges are appointed as Polling Officers, Sector Magistrates, Presiding Officers, Route Officers and Electronic Voting Machine ( EVM’s) trainers. Govindaraju, Assistant Professor, Government First Grade College, Gundlupet said that so far only 30 per cent of the portions had been covered in his college.
He said that students were well informed about the lectures’ absence and had the tendency to extend the holidays on their own.
Another lecturer rued that students from rural areas are wooed by politicians for campaigning. One can see that attendance percentage dip during the election preparations, the lecturer added.
Two years ago, similar problems occurred during Cauvery agitation in the region. Majority of the colleges failed to complete portion and students had to study on their own.