Mumbai: Master of Social Work students protest inside campus over not receiving marksheets
Mumbai: Rajiv Gandhi contemporary centre Mumbai university students protest teacher's for regular lectures and passing certificate those who passed master degree, at fort campus, during Mumbai university convocation, in Mumbai on Thursday. (Photo by Bhushan Koyande) Mumbai: Students of Master of Social Work (MSW) course of the Mumbai University (MU) have not received their marksheets since two years, no lectures have been conducted and they do not have a full-time coordinator for their department. The university has verbally assured them to provide marksheets in 15 days, lectures will be conducted in next three days and the coordinator will be finalised in a week.
Students staged a protest on Thursday at the university campus at Fort with banners and slogans claiming their demands. These students are studying at Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Contemporary Studies which is a self-financing autonomous body of the MU. Students have not received their results since the course was first started in 2016.
No lectures have been conducted while the students are informed their semester examinations will be held in April. Dhiren Rathaur, a student said, “How can we appear for examination if there have been no lectures? Even if lectures begin now we need a period of 90 days for preparation as per the university rule. There has been a shortage of availability of teachers to conduct our lectures.”
Around 75 students of this course are unable to conduct fieldwork and research projects due to lack of a full-time coordinator of the department. Ajinkya Hardikar, a student said, “Research and fieldwork is the backbone of social work. We will complete our masters degree after this semester in April and we need solid fieldwork for jobs and higher education. But till now we are not able to do any of it and we do not even have our results in place.” This is the first batch as this MSW course, a two-year degree programme, was introduced in the MU in 2016.