'Varsity unfit for NAAC 'A' grade'

A majority of students and teachers say BU’s standards are very poor and unfit to be reaccredited with ‘A’ grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).

They listed out the following factors which are preventing the BU from maintaining a good standards: A large number of colleges, increasing number of autono­mous colleges, improper evaluation system, delay in declaring revaluation results, improper functioning of a single window system to address students’ problems, semester system, non-availability of textbooks, lack of a committee to review curriculum, lack of sufficient training programmes for teaching staff, decrease in the number of good teachers getting into the BU and no system to encourage talented students.

Students, faculty, infrastructure, research and environs of the campus are the basic components of a university. The BU lacks synchronisation of these components, affecting quality, says a senior professor of the Humanities Department.

The biggest hurdle in ensuring the standards is the large number of affiliated colleges.
The BU is taking the load of at least three universities, and hence, it needs to be bifurcated. In the recent past, there has been an increase in the number of autonomous colleges. This has led to the concentration of intellectual abilities. The contribution of these autonomous colleges in the overall development of BU is a big zero, reveals a professor of Maths in a Rajajinagar college.

“You can’t ensure standards when you have two campuses. This is what has affected discharge of duties by the staff. The two campuses have led to the delay in completing the academic tasks,” he adds.

A senior professor, involved in the examination process over the last three decades, says: “There is no centralised information system to provide correct and complete information right from admissions to examination process. When we seek clarifications and answers, the staff assigned the examination duty indulge in blame game.”

Most teachers find the semester system a major challenge in maintaining academic standards. The annual system is most suitable for most of the programmes, especially the professional courses like BEd. The semester system just kills the quality, says Prof Sandhya L.

Dr Palanethra L, principal of KLE BEd College, says there is no system to review the curriculum frequently. The curriculum of some of the programmes like BEd was designed some 10 years ago.

The university textbook committee has failed to ensure availability of textbooks on time. Only limited number of copies is printed and the copies are available only towards the end of the semester. How can teachers perform better and students assimilate the lessons when this is the reality, ask Shilpa and Rashmi L.

The biggest chaos is in the revaluation system. There is no time limit to complete the revaluation of answerscripts and students are prevented from getting into the next classes. The BU lacks a cell to redress such issues, they added.

There is hardly any attempt to train and update teachers’ knowledge with the latest developments. Designing and setting up question papers are unscientific, while the evaluation is inefficient.

Standards in administrative matters are just above average.