Professional colleges wary of repeat of 2020

Manasvi Parikh, 19, cleared her Class 12 board exam in June last year, however, her first lecture as a first-year law student began only two weeks ago

Manasvi Parikh, 19, cleared her Class 12 board exam in June last year, however, her first lecture as a first-year law student began only two weeks ago. With the state’s decision to postpone SSC and HSC exams to June this year, students as well as colleges are worried about a repeat of academic year 2020-21.

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“We were worried that the current batch of first-year students will end up studying in the same class as the first-year batch of the 2021-22 academic year because the current year admission concluded only recently. But with Covid-19 lockdown spilling into the next academic year, looks like the next batch will be equally delayed,” said the principal of a south Mumbai law college, on condition of anonymity. Admissions to most professional courses were delayed by a few months in 2020-21, first due to the lockdown and then due to a petition filed in the Bombay high court for clarity on the status of the Maratha quota.

In December, registration process for most professional courses, including law, engineering, architecture and pharmacy, had to be delayed by a few weeks to give students time to make necessary changes to their admission form after the state decided to continue admissions without the inclusion of the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) quota.

Government and private engineering colleges in the state started their lectures for their first-year students only towards the end of January 2021.

“The central bodies finished admissions to Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) by the last week of November, but the state common entrance test (CET) cell was still conducting registration till end of December. In the coming year too, engineering admissions to non-IIT institutes will be affected if the CET cell does not act quickly,” said Gopakumaran Thampi, principal of Thadomal Shahani Engineering College in Bandra. He added that for the current first-year batch, colleges have planned their first semester exams online this month and hope to finish the second semester by July 2021.

Due to the status of Covid-19 across the country, officials are now contemplating postponing entrance exams to all professional courses this year.

While the National Testing Agency (NTA) is yet to clarify the status of the third session of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Mains, scheduled to take place in the last week of April, parents and students are already unhappy about how this delay will affect students and their preparation for a very important year of their lives.

“School education boards should plan online exams for Class 10 and 12 students instead of postponing exams. What happens if the situation doesn’t improve until May or even June? Does the government expect Class 10 and 12 students to live in this anxiety for months,” asked Sudha Shenoy, parent of a medical student and an activist.

She added that delay in the academic structure of Class 10 and 12 students for two consecutive years will have a cascading effect on their future courses as well.