102 out of 100? It’s possible at Delhi University

NEW DELHI: When Delhi University student Nishi Sinha (name changed) got 102 marks in her second year French exam, she just couldn't trust her eyes. The reason for her disbelief was simple — the French paper carried total marks of 100! Welcome to the exam evaluation mess in Delhi University after the rollout of the semester system. Like Sinha, several students have found that the marks attributed to them were more than the maximum possible. Times Of India has copies of marksheets replete with such discrepancies. A second year BSc student is shown to have scored above maximum in both internal assessment as well as the written exam. He was given 65 out of 50 in Paper I and 74 out of 50 in Paper II. A student found he had scored 57 out of 55 in mathematics. Another has been given 58 marks out of 38 in physics. Due to such impossible scores in her marksheet, a student was even denied admission in the university's Law Faculty "Such inflation of marks has made a complete mockery of the system. Integrity of our examination system had been the university's strongest feature. But now, it has lost credibility," said Nandita Narain, a senior mathematics teacher at St Stephen's College. Narain alleged that the varsity authorities were not taking the matter seriously. "What is shocking is that one of these victims met the V-C at his 'darbar', but instead of helping her out, the response she received has been insensitive. She was denied admission in Law Faculty on the basis of the marksheet in question," she said That is not all. Eleven students of Kalindi College have received two sets of their third semester exam results. In the second marksheets, six marks had been knocked off their total scores. As a result, a few failed. The first batch of scores was posted on January 4 while the second was on January 8, 2013. 'Semesters, quotas adding to workload' The second lot of marksheets say that the changes were "due to IA (internal assessment) rectifications", when it is quite clear from the scores themselves that the actual changes were made to the exam marks and not in the IA ones. There are reports from other colleges of similar discrepancies in the results of the undergraduate semester exams conducted in November-December 2012. The results were declared in "record time" recently. University sources say such glitches have become common since the introduction of the semester system, which practically doubles the work of the exam branch. The load on the branch has already gone up with the rise in the number of seats following implementation of OBC reservations. University authorities have repeatedly blamed the numbers not only for such glitches, but even for major reforms such as removal of provisions for special chance and re-evaluation. University authorities admit that given the large number of students involved, errors can creep in. "Mistakes can happen when we are dealing with evaluation and declaration of 122 results for 1.30 lakh students. We have opened a grievance redress window and are rectifying the mistakes. We have declared the results in a record 15 days," said DU's dean of examinations, Rup Lal. Times View Two sets of marks for some and 100%-plus for others shows that the examination system in Delhi University is under some serious stress. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that in large measure the stress is caused by the haste with which drastic changes are being ushered in. 'Just do it' is not always a good idea. Where we are dealing with one of the country's premier universities and the future of tens of thousands of students, it might be wiser to allow time for methodical progress with adequate discussion and preparation by those charged with implementing the new systems. Times of India.