The University of Madras is yet to declare the results for the semester examinations that ended in December as the evaluation of papers is still underway. The delay in publishing results and providing original mark sheets for students has become the norm in the last few years and has affected students in affiliated colleges, especially those who want to pursue higher education, stated a report in The New Indian Express.
The university is also yet to pay the teachers who have evaluated answer sheets from 2022.
There are 131 government, aided and self-financing colleges in Chennai, Chengalpattu, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur under the university. Of these, only 23 colleges are autonomous, providing them the authority to evaluate examination papers and declare results.
While autonomous colleges declared the results last December or in the first week of January, other colleges affiliated to the university are still awaiting results since the university’s evaluation is expected to go on till February 21.
Why the delay?
According to sources, the university only started the evaluation of the last semester’s examination papers at the beginning of February for the examinations that were conducted in December, delaying the process by more than a month.
“Professors who came for evaluation staged protests demanding the university to pay the remuneration. Mostly professors from self-financing colleges engage in the evaluation process to earn additional money and gain experience. Each of them evaluates 40 answer sheets per day, for which, they are paid Rs 12 and Rs 15 per paper for undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) examination papers, respectively. While this amount has not been increased for the past ten years, the delay in paying the amount has been increasing since 2016-17 when we used to get paid in cash at the end of the day,” informed one of the professors working in a self-financing college.
Sources in the university added that many of the professors are unwilling to engage in evaluation, after knowing that the university is in a fund crunch following the Income Tax department blocking its accounts.
“The evaluation is usually carried out when the colleges are closed. The university has delayed it to February and has not paid the teachers resulting in protests. With experienced professors unwilling to evaluate the papers, they are managing with only those available which could affect the quality of work,” said a professor working at the university.
Adding to the woes, the university is yet to distribute the original mark sheets to students whose semester ended in May-June, 2023, while the results were declared in September last week, said principals in affiliated colleges.
“We received the marksheets for a few courses last week and are awaiting the rest of them. For students who want to pursue PG, we took printouts of the online results and attested them so that they could continue their studies. What is amusing is that the University of Madras is also pressuring the same students to provide original mark sheets soon without distributing them in the first place,” said a government college principal of a district.
Varsity officials were not available for comments.
