Mumbai University exam results delayed again: Move to go digital taken in haste, lacked planning

At 6 pm on 31 July, 2017, the deadline to declare results for 477 Mumbai University courses will lapse. However, with just hours left, only 153 courses had released the grades, and 324 courses were still to announce their results. There are graduation and post-graduation degrees both part of these 324 courses, which seem certain to miss the deadline. In all, over 3.35 lakh answer sheets are yet to be evaluated, and the students are fast running out of patience. Considering the Mumbai University has abysmally failed to adhere to the deadline set by Maharashtra governor C Vidyasagar Rao, he may be forced to sack vice-chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh, said sources in the governor’s office. [caption id=“attachment_3877593” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons[/caption] Rao, himself the Mumbai University chancellor, had set a 31 July deadline to the varsity, saying all results needed to be declared by this date. Faculty members were even asked to work overtime and on weekends to ensure results are expedited. Even with the deadline just hours away, sources said, the varsity is hoping to declare all results within the next three-four days. Mumbai University registrar MA Khan assured Firstpost that the varsity would declare 100 more exams’ results by the end of Monday. Commerce exam results, especially, are likely to be declared before Thursday, he said. To expedite online assessment, Mumbai University even took help from Nagpur and Aurangabad University teachers. “We had set up 142 centres and borrowed at least 50 computers from other universities’ labs,” Khan added. But even if Khan’s words hold true and the varsity declares results within this week, it would have overshot the original deadline by over two months. Results of all exams were originally declared in May or June. But this time, it’s going into August. A major change this year has been online assessment of answer sheets.

Shiv Sena legislator Anil Parab said it was a big decision taken, and one without consulting professors, experts and other technical persons. Parab alleged that vice-chancellor Deshmukh took this decision in isolation. He also claimed that the party will seek a breach of privilege motion against state education minister Vinod Tawade on Tuesday. Meanwhile, students’ wings of opposition parties like Congress and NCP continued their protests against Deshmukh and Tawde, demanding their ousters. A senior professor who wished to remain anonymous alleged that only 50 scanning machines were pressed into service and these were expected to scan over 22 lakh answer sheets. The varisty deputed 250 employees to scan 1.5 lakh answer sheets every day, which ultimately proved impossible. Even the tender process for going online was completed only in the last week of April, and many exam moderators were then on summer vacations. All of these factors caused delays in various streams like BCom, BSc, BA, etc., each of which saw a large number of students appearing this year. The chaotic process of online moderation makes many wish for the simpler times when answer sheets were marked manually. Back then, a teacher would check about 30 answer sheets every day, but they can barely do eight to 10 a day under the new system, because many of the moderators are still getting accustomed to how the online moderation system functions. Which is why they took more time, the sources said. Professor Neeraj Hatekar, who sought voluntary retirement from Mumbai University after saying his skills would be more effective if he “fights from the outside”, blamed lack of planning of the chaos. “Proper planning could have prevented this, while mismanagement and lack of consultation with other involved partners only made it worse. It failed miserably,” Hatekar said, terming the goings-on at Mumbai University “deeply distressing”.