Delay in exams, evaluation affects future of MU students

Mangaluru: The long delay in conducting semester examinations and their evaluation, due to various reasons, has cast a pall of uncertainty on the future of numerous students.
The final-semester undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students have been left in the lurch, due to an unprecedented delay in conducting examinations. Now they will have to wait till the end of November to get their results. According to the pre-pandemic calendar of events of Mangalore University (MU), the examination and results of final-semester or sixth-semester undergraduate and fourth semester postgraduate courses should have been announced by August.
“I am in a dilemma as I have a job offer from an MNC in Bengaluru. However, I cannot take it up, since my course and examinations are not over. I am clueless at the moment about my future,” said a student pursuing MSc. Another worried UG student said that she is anxious whether she would be able to pursue higher education or not.
P L Dharma, registrar (evaluation), Mangalore University, admitted the odd-semester examination, that was started in April, was delayed due multiple reasons, including the second wave of Covid-19 and KSRTC bus strike. It was scheduled from August, but the district administration stopped it due to the surge in Covid-19 cases. The postgraduate examinations that were planned in April, took place in August, and were completed a few days ago. Finally, both UG and PG examinations got over in the first week of September.
Dharma maintained that MU has planned to conduct sixth-semester UG and fourth semester PG examinations from September 30. It will be over by the third week of October. MU has made provisions for those final-semester backlog students to apply for the exam.
On the delay in evaluation of odd semesters, Dharma said they had plans to carry out the evaluation and examination simultaneously, when UG and PG examinations were on. However, there was opposition from teachers, as they could not carry out evaluation and invigilation duties simultaneously. “We have decided to start evaluation from September 27. If all goes well, results of PG/UG odd semester exams will be declared by the end of October,” he said.
The teaching faculty is again unhappy with MU’s decision to carry out exam duty and evaluation work at the same time.