V-C Panel Mulls Online Exams to Salvage Academic Calendar, UGC to Veto Over Disparity among Students

New Delhi: The University Grants Commission is not in favour of conducting online examinations considering the social and economic disparities among students even as a panel formed by it explores the idea.

The UGC had formed two panels to assess ways to mitigate the academic loss caused by the Covid-19 lockdown. One of the panels headed by Haryana University V-C RC Kuhad is likely to submit its report on April 13, while the second panel, under IGNOU Vice-Chancellor Nageshwar Rao, is likely to submit a report by April 17.

The panel headed by Kuhad is looking into on-time examination and adhering to the academic calendar, while the one led by Rao is working on “digital education, exams and learning”.

“The UGC has set up two committees for examinations and online education. One committee will look at the aspects related to examinations and academic calendar. On basis of recommendations of the committee, we will issue guidelines,” UGC Chairman DP Singh told news agency ANI on Sunday.

Online Examination

“The committees are still working on charting a route for academic activity. They are getting views from various stakeholders and collating all the views in the reports,” a source in the UGC.

“We have come to know through informal interactions that the panel is mulling online examinations to cover the academic loss, but online examination is not feasible considering that many students don’t come from backgrounds and regions where they have sufficient infrastructure. Online on-time examination is ruled out as many of our students are from tribal and rural areas,” the source added.

The higher education regulator is all for conducting “pen and paper on-time examination”, the source said.

Professor Kuhad, who leads the panel that also includes seven other V-Cs, remained unavailable for comment.

Voices of Dissent

Teachers and professors of the Delhi University, meanwhile, have written to Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) president Dr Rajib Ray expressing concerns over the time given to the Kuhad-led panel.

“The committee was told to submit its report by April 13 with 4-5 working days in hand. In the context of vast and diverse higher education of our country, this meagre time is a vivid commentary on its methodology and intent. The disenfranchisement of the teachers, what started with Choice-Based Credit System, seems to be in final leg in the garb of Covid-19 lockdown,” said an academician at DU.

The academia fears that the committee might be used to impose online classes and online examination as a substitute to classroom learning. “Earlier also, the universities were told to replace some papers by Massive Open Online Courses‎ (MOOC) courses, adversely affecting the workload and quality of education,” said a teacher.

They’ve brought out the story of digital divide that raises serious questions of accessibility issues as 3/4th of our students come from socially and economically weaker sections, teachers said.

“The disruption caused by the pandemic to the academic calendar can only be compensated by extending the semester adequately. Mass transition to online teaching in the name of the pandemic is a design to push the implementation of New National Education Policy (NEP),” a professor said.

They further added that the government has “hidden agenda” as proposed in NEP draft 2019 for closing down many of the existing colleges and yet doubling student enrolments, “which can be achieved only by mass online classes”.

The teachers said that they are not opposed to digital initiative, but not at the cost of quality education for all students.