BU students will never fail in their examinations. The university’s Academic Council on Wednesday passed a resolution to replace the word ‘fail’ with ‘to reappear’ in marks cards. The council also passed another major resolution to make degree certificates available online for students. Both resolutions were passed after council members unanimously agreed to Vice-Chancellor Dr Prabhu Dev’s proposal, which made a strong pitch for both.
Online mechanism
According to the resolution, marks cards of students who do not clear their examinations with minimum marks will carry the number of attempts and the words ‘to reappear’ instead of ‘fail’.
The resolution to make degree certificates available online was passed on the condition of making the online mechanism completely tamper-proof and secure. The online certificates will be made available to students who have applied for this year’s convocation.
Addressing the media after the meeting, Dev said: “The decision to make degree certificates available online is a student friendly initiative to avoid long delays in obtaining certificates.”
He added that degrees will be awarded to 34,000 students this year and all students will be given both a traditional degree certificate and the opportunity to avail the online certificate.
Meanwhile, the decision to change the words on the marks card was taken after the V-C suggested the need to address the connection between failure in examinations and student suicides. Dev said the relation between the two was a well established fact and suggested “to reappear” as an alternative. The resolution was passed after council members suggested that the number of attempts too be included in order to inform students who have exhausted all attempts.
Of the other significant decisions taken at the council’s meeting is to sponsor varsity students who represented the nation at international sporting events. The academic council also ratified the new integrated four year Bachelor of Science (BS) course. The BS course will commence from the next academic year and will have an initial intake of 100 in select colleges.