Governor's committee for university examinations asks student union for survey findings

NASHIK: The chairman of the four-member committee formed by the state governor

Bhagat Singh Koshyari

asked a student union to submit a report based on their findings about students' inclination for examinations.

Suhas Pednekar

, Vice Chancellor of Mumbai University, who is also heading the committee, had asked

Maharashtra Students Union

(MASU) to submit a report.

"Before finalising the State Committee's report, we wanted to know the opinion of the students. The student union had conducted the recent surveys, so I asked them to send the report at the earliest. We have received their report through email on Sunday," the v-c told TOI.

According to him, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has released broad guidelines regarding the university examinations and academic calendar. Now, the State Committee will submit a report to the governor shortly after considering all the possible options.

The lakhs of university students across the state are waiting for the universities to come up with a decision about their pending examinations of 2019-20 and beginning of the academic year 2020-21.

The four-member committee includes the vice chancellors of Mumbai University, SNDT Women's University,

Shivaji University

Kolhapur and Savitribai Phule Pune University.

Siddharth Ingale, President of MASU, said "The students of all these universities are from both urban and rural areas. They wonder what will happen to their academic year and cannot focus on their studies or on developing any other personal skill due to the environment of uncertainty. They want a decision soon."

He had also given a written request to the UGC authorities on April 23 saying they should scrap the examinations this year and declare the result as per the previous years' results and internal examination of this year. UGC has also suggested the same in their guidelines.

According to their survey, 83 per cent students want the examinations to be scrapped so that they can be relieved and focus on the next year's studies.

"Online examinations is not a possible option for each and every student and offline examinations entail dangers of novel Coronavirus. In such a scenario, we request the State Committee to consider the students' difficulties," he added.

Their report also says that 52 per cent students across the state said they are not having any online classes to complete their syllabus.

Ingale said that while over 25000 students had attended their Online Vidyarthi Samvad, on Facebook and YouTube on April 30, over 1500 students responded via Google Forms.

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