2L poor quality engineers to pass out as arrear exams scrapped: Experts

2L poor quality engineers to pass out as arrear exams scrapped: Experts

‘Hard Earned Degrees Will Lose Value’

Ragu.Raman@timesgroup.com

Chennai:30.08.3030

The cancellation of all arrears exams for engineering students in Tamil Nadu, due to Covid-19, may in one stroke bring down the value of lakhs of hard earned degrees and ensure that at least two lakh students without basic understanding in key subjects become engineers, say experts.

It may also damage the reputation of Anna University and lead to genuine students being overlooked for courses of higher education or employment due to loss of credibility, they add.

The government announced that all students with arrears (except final semester) who have registered and paid fees for exams will be exempted from writing exams and they will be promoted.

There are currently 4,01,226 engineering students with arrears in TN. “Of the two lakh students now set to receive degrees without clearing exams, one lakh have finished college and 10,000 have exhausted all attempts to clear arrears,” a professor said. Currently, one student has been found to have 61 arrears out of 68 papers, he said.

B Chidambararajan, principal of Chennai-based Valliammai Engineering College, said a student can clear 6-10 papers in one semester. “If students with more arrears are promoted without writing exams, the value of degrees will be lost. Even now many companies don’t rely on semester marks to select candidates,” he said.

Almost all private companies have a robust recruitment process and will not take up students without screening them, he said. “If any of such candidates join the public sector, it will have very serious consequences,” he said, suggesting an exit test for students with many arrear.

The concept of getting students to arrear exams is to enable them to acquire sufficient knowledge in a subject, said M A Maluk Mohammed, director and correspondent of MAM College of Engineering and Technology in Trichy. “Citing Covid-19 scenario, we cannot pass all students with arrears. It is making a mockery of the system.” The government can come up with innovative solutions like online exams or open book exams, he said.

E Balagurusamy, former vice-chancellor of Anna University, said universities are not ration shops to distribute free degrees.

“There is no need to declare students with arrears passed with such urgency. Many finished college years ago and have been appearing for arrear exams for several years. They can wait for a few more months.”

All India Council for Technical Education chairman Anil D Sahasrabudhe wondered how a student who failed a course could be given a degree. “Such students will not be valued by industry or other higher educational institutes and would not get jobs. What is the use of such degrees?”

‘Unfair to those who couldn’t pay fee’

The state government’s decision to scrap arrear exams and promote students who have paid the arrears exam fees, received criticism from those who didn’t make the payment. “Payment of fees alone cannot be the criteria for the promotion. If all students cannot avail of this benefit, the exams should be postponed,” said G Kavita, a BSc Maths student at a Madurai college. Colleges state that those intending to write the exam would have paid when the fee was being collected before the lockdown in February and March. “In this uncertain period, several students with just one or two arrears could not pay the fees,” said S Vel Deva, Madurai district secretary, Students’ Federation of India (SFI). Questioning the cancellation of the arrears exams on a large-scale basis, he added that there should be equality in this process. TNN