MU commits to timely declaration of winter session results, says VC

The University of Mumbai has unveiled an action plan to address the problem of delay in results, including distributing hall tickets a month before exams and implementing an online data updating system for attendance. The university is also forming clusters of colleges to decentralize the implementation of the New Education Policy and plans to offer undergraduate courses on university campuses.

University of Mumbai (MU) has unveiled an action plan to address the longstanding problem of delay in results, vice-chancellor Ravindra Kulkarni said on Tuesday and added that this will ensure declaration of winter session results on time.

MU commits to timely declaration of winter session results, says VC

“First we tried to understand the problem areas and found that the reason for the delay was the issuance of hall tickets. This time, we distributed hall tickets to the students a month before their examinations,” professor Kulkarni told HT.

Examinations in the winter session are held between October and December. For years, students have voiced their frustration over the protracted waiting period for their results. The situation has consistently painted a negative image of the university.

Explaining the plan, Kulkarni said to avoid attendance issues, MU will come up with an online data updating system. “For the upcoming examinations, MU has instructed colleges to upload students’ attendance data on the same day of the examination via an online system. MU has developed a special online system to track students’ attendance during examinations.” For this online system, MU recently conducted a training session for principals and all staff involved in the examination process.

About the issue of withheld results, MU found that the major reason was the late uploading of internal marks by colleges. Kulkarni said, “We are now following up with the colleges to submit students’ internal marks on time. Once we have received them, we will upload them to our system, which will expedite the result process.”

Kulkarni expressed his commitment to ensure that MU students will no longer be plagued by the anxiety and inconvenience caused by delayed results.

Cluster of colleges to implement NEP

With over 850 affiliated colleges, the challenge of implementing the New Education Policy (NEP) from the academic year 2024-25 has been a subject of concern. Kulkarni said that MU has formed a cluster of colleges to decentralise the implementation process.

“Each cluster will be headed by a lead college, which will be responsible for the quality enhancement of member colleges,” he said.

Explaining the structure, Kulkarni said that the colleges in a cluster will collectively design a range of courses to provide a broader choice to students and a multidisciplinary approach to learning. “These colleges will allow students to share resources such as libraries, labs, and courses, and also have autonomy to decide their financial share in this.” MU has established two types of clusters - one for engineering colleges and another for traditional courses.

UG courses on university campuses

Considering the implementation of NEP, universities are also planning to offer undergraduate courses. “While implementing the four-year UG courses as per NEP, university campuses must run UG courses alongside postgraduate courses. When selecting UG courses, universities must think of innovative courses that won’t disrupt the current courses running in colleges. Starting UG courses on campus is also challenging, and for this, we need to develop infrastructure. We have at least three years in hand for this step, considering that we have already started planning for it,” Kulkarni added.