Diwali spoiler for college staff: Mumbai University’s winter session exams

The University of Mumbai recently announced the commencement dates of exams to be conducted in the winter session this year and once again, teachers have been left angry with assessment work as well as supervision taking over their Diwali break.

As per the academic calendar shared by the university at the beginning of the year, colleges will break for Diwali vacation from the first week of November till the 20th of the month. However, as per the exam schedule released by MU, not only will teachers be busy checking papers of exams that will begin from the last week of October, but many exams will also be conducted during their vacation.

“Once again, fifth semester exams of BMM and BMS students will start from between November 13 and 20, which means teachers will have no Diwali vacation. Once again exams will begin in the last week of October and go on till January,” said a senior professor from a suburban college. She added that many teachers who had already made travel plans will now have to either cancel their tickets, or other teachers who are in town will have to fill up for them, which will be unfair to all, she added.

This year, admissions to the first year degree college courses were delayed by a few weeks due to a confusion over admissions for reserved category students in minority institutes. This is one of the main reasons why first semester exams, which will be a college exam but conducted by the university, will commence from November 28. “Teachers will start supervision work in the last week of October and work through their vacations, till the first week of December, till when many undergraduate exams will go on. The university has stopped considering teachers while setting exam time-table,” said Anju Kapoor, principal of UPG College, Vile Parle.

While colleges and teachers are unhappy with the university’s exam plan, officials from the university said the problem will persist for some time in order to streamline the examination process. “The delay in announcing results, which started in 2016, is still spilling into the current semester because results are getting delayed. Now that results are getting streamlined, the examination schedule too, will slowly be brought back to track,” said an official from the Examination and Evaluation department of the university.

MU has invited principals of colleges on Friday to meet and discuss ‘academic issues’. MU’s vice-chancellor Suhas Pednekar will be addressing all principals and many will use this platform to share their concern over this issue.

First Published: Aug 24, 2018 00:24 IST