the goan I network
PANAJI
Ahead of the academic council meeting of the Goa University due to be held on March 19-20, the Goa University Students Council and the Postgraduate Students Representative have once again raised the contentious issue of refund of re-evaluation fees and demanded that the hefty fees charged from students for seeking re-evaluation of the answer papers be refunded if the applicant-student succeeds.
President of the students council Khemal Prabhu Shirodkar and the Postgraduate Students’ representative met the University’s Registrar and presented the demand, among several others, in writing.
The Goa University refunds just 50 per-cent of the re-evaluation fees only if the students’ pleas succeed to the extent the revised result is at least 20 per-cent higher than the original marks.
The students council has argued in its representation that in a 80 marks paper, 20 per-cent marks would mean at least 15, a quantum of increase which would occur in re-evaluation in the rarest of rare cases.
Another demand made by the Students Council is to revise syllabi across all undergraduate and post-graduate cases which they claim are currently outdated. The representation makes a case for inclusion of skill-based content in syllabi as the current curriculum leads them to degrees with knowledge insufficient to succeed in the current job market.
Another demand voiced by the students is to have the grace marks rule made applicable also to the choice based credit system. Earlier students used to be granted five grace marks if they had got 35% in a paper so they could clear it with passing percentage of 40%. Other demands include marks and credits given for sports to also be made applicable to post-graduate courses and to grant students ‘cultural marks’.
When Choice Based Credit System was introduced, the GU did away with the five 5 grace marks rule.
In the representation, the students have backed their demand for cultural marks citing the precedent in a Kerala university and have also presented the system followed by it.
Meanwhile, the double evaluation currently being followed in law colleges, where two assessors evaluate the paper and the average of both is considered as the final score of the student, the council has demanded be reverted back to the old system of single evaluation. The argument to back the demand proffered by the Council is that generally there is an inexplicable wide gap between the marks given by the two assessors.
