Universities curtail vacation time 

BENGALURU: To bring the calendar back on track from next the academic year, universities are cutting short their semester breaks, while also buckling up for a second wave on campus. This even as examinations are being held offline for the ongoing semester.

Higher Education Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan had announced that examinations and classes will go on as per the academic calendar and there will be no revision. The onus was put on universities to take precautionary measures to contain the spread on campus. University administrators are trying to ensure that the academic delay this year does not spill over to the next year, and repercussions are curtailed .

“The previous year, post-graduate (PG) students missed out on field work for dissertation, which is part of their programme. They had to rely on secondary data sources. This year, we are getting our students back to college early so that they have enough time for data collection and industry visits,”  Vice-Chancellor of Bangalore North University, T D Kemparaju, told TNIE. 

Final-year PG students just have two days of semester break this year. The break for first year undergraduate students has also been reduced from 15 days to seven days, considering that they need more physical classes before their examinations are scheduled in the third week of April, after all other years.
Sanitation and added vigilance for symptomatic cases has become among the top priorities on campuses as the second wave has hit.

University of Agricultural Sciences Vice-Chancellor Dr S Rajendra Prasad told TNIE that the end of the academic semester is drawing near and Covid-19 incidents on campus at present are zero. A chief medical officer is placed on campus in case of incidents, health department guidelines are followed, and distancing is maintained in classroom as well, he said.

As for setting right of the coming academic year, Prasad said that students are not given more than two weeks semester break in April, as opposed to the regular five weeks. “They have been at home for almost a year, hence we are curtailing the break,” he added. About 70 per cent of the curriculum here is practical and students have to work on the field. 

Meanwhile, engineering colleges affiliated to the Visvesvaraya Technological University are also facing a similar situation — the one-month break has been reduced to half, VTU Vice-Chancellor Karisiddappa told TNIE. The final-year students of Semester 7, have already begun with their internships, while the fifth semester students have started their break 10 days ago. This means, students of the first two years are the only ones on campus now.Also, the first semester classes are functioning in a blended mode — half the students attend classes online and come to campus on a rotational basis every week.