As AU changes evaluation process, colleges complain

R. Sujatha 

 10% dip in pass percentage in institutions that took students with high cut-off

The November/December semester results that were released by Anna University last week have been disappointing for affiliated engineering colleges.

The results were declared for odd semesters, except the first year. College principals say there has been a 10% dip in pass percentage in colleges that admit students with high cut-off and 20% dip in pass percentage in colleges which have taken in students with a cut-off below 160. The results have been especially dismal in Salem, Erode and Namakkal belt, officials said.

“The Salem belt has suffered the worst,” said the principal of a college in the region. Colleges in Karur, Dindigul and Dharmapuri have done relatively better.

The principal of a college in Salem said there was a drop of about 10-12% in pass percentage as compared to previous years. “Our colleges have a cut-off of 165 but there has been a drop of around 4-5% in marks. A student who got 80% last time has scored 45% this time,” he said.

According to private college authorities in the western belt, the change in evaluation system had affected colleges that had admitted students with a lower cut-off. In such colleges, there was a dip of around 20% in results, one of them said.

Top colleges in the Chennai zone are also not happy with the results. A management official of a leading college in the Chennai zone said the results were not satisfactory. “A student who scored 195 cut-off and admitted under government quota has failed in one subject. Students placed in IBM and TCS have got arrears. The answer key for Computer Science Engineering had errors. Anna University has four zones in Chennai itself and we don’t know where the papers went for correction. We are planning to represent to the university,” he said.

Re-evaluation pleas

After much criticism and adverse remarks that too many students sought re-evaluation for the last several years, Anna University revamped its evaluation system. It debarred over 1,000 teachers from examination-related work.

University officials provided answer keys for each subject and each examiner evaluated around 10 answer scripts, instead of 20 in the previous years. Also, a chief examiner was in charge of every 10 evaluators. The chief examiner also picked up a paper at random and subjected it for re-evalution, principals said.

The self-financing colleges want the Anna University to follow the practice of polytechnic institutions, where each subject is corrected in one zone.

Anna University’s controller of examination G.V. Uma, however, said that except for the Salem region, all colleges had done well and the university had registered a pass percentage of 76.