Anantapur: Students, teachers up in arms against UGC move

• Senior academic activist Suresh Babu says no real or virtual classes have been conducted during last 4-5 months in colleges due to Covid-19 pandemic

• States it is extremely unfair and unjust on the part of the UGC to conduct examinations, even without conducting classes 

Anantapur: Students and teaching staff of private engineering colleges and universities are up in arms against the UGC for asking institutions to hold examinations without conducting online classes and that too in an atmosphere where the stakeholders are vulnerable to Covid-19.

The UGC has to respond as to who will compensate them for loss of job opportunities or admission deadlines due to belated completion of their final year exams, feels students.

Conducting of examination amid the Covid crisis poses a massive threat to the life of the stakeholders, such as students, examiners and the UGC has failed to take into account the plight of students, who will be constrained to travel across the country.

"Day by day positive cases are rising. Standard operating procedures in most of the districts are not clear. Many towns have several containment zones. Free movement of students will be restricted and will cause a lot of harassment. And most importantly, there is non-availability of free air/rail/bus transportation. Several areas are hit by deadly incessant rains," says Suresh Babu, senior academic activist.

No real or virtual classes have been conducted during last 4-5 months in most of colleges across India due to Covid-19 pandemic and thus it is extremely unfair and unjust on the part of the UGC to conduct examinations, even without conducting classes. Most of the faculties working in various private engineering colleges and professional colleges have not received salaries since January. Locally several college managements had changed overnight and the teaching faculty had been left in the lurch as neither old and new managements are taking responsibility.

Rajiv Reddy, a final year M Tech student says that in the absence of theory examinations, universities can conduct major project viva voce for all the M Tech students through virtual mode. Backlog subjects can be promoted based on internal assessment and practical marks. Examination can be conducted through online mode for backlog subjects.

Local engineering students are demanding the UGC/university/state government to declare a novel method of assessment with reasonable credibility for each paper. They shouldn't forget that students have spent time in this semester and gave their best even in this hard time.