Presidency upset over college survey

KOLKATA: Once again it is time for the Gallup survey of a national magazine to list the top 10 colleges of the country in every stream and the gravevine has it that the elite Presidency College will not do very well this year. The issue is expected to hit the stands on May 25.
Presidency principal Amitava Chatterjee is already upset, anticipating a poor rating.“A poor score would affect the image of the college and our standing in students’ eyes at a time when fresh admissions are about to happen in July,� Chatterjee told TNN.
Chatterjee is unhappy about questions that were asked by the survey team. “They asked so many subjective questions which have no definitive answers. This assessment is not scientific as you cannot come to concrete conclusions,� Chatterjee said.
Citing examples he said, “they asked me if student politics existed in the campus. I fail to understand why or how this can affect the standard of the college. Politics has existed here since inception and I believe that it is a students’ democratic right to get involved in students’ politics.�
Similarly other questions like the reputation of the college or campus placements have put him off. “Can you quantify the reputation of the college? We all know the bearing of the college in people’s minds, but that cannot be an answer to a marks bearing question,� Chatterjee said. He added the survey team should have realised that Presidency is a purely academic college and students move on to become research scholars or bag prize teaching positions from here.
In 2001 Presidency was on the top of every scholar’s mind when the Arts faculty topped the survey charts and the Science faculty came fourth. In 2002 the Arts faculty crashed to the sixth position while the Science faculty finished third. Unable to come to terms with this fall Chatterjee had sent a written complaint saying the results were not realistic.