Chennai: In a shocker, a majority of engineering colleges witness over 20 per cent drop in their first semester results owing to the poor results in engineering maths subject.
Anna University has announced the first-semester exam results for affiliated engineering colleges on Wednesday evening.
“After going through the results, we fear that engineering dropouts will be more this year. In many colleges, more than 60 per cent of students could not clear the maths paper,” a worried principal said.
The results have sent shock waves across engineering coleges as even the top engineering colleges could not get pass percentage above 75 per cent this year.
The college principals and teachers pointed towards ‘toughest’ engineering maths-1 question paper as the reason for the poor performance. After the maths exam on January 7, many students complained that they could not finish the exam within the allotted time due to complicated and twisted questions.
“All engineering colleges from top engineering colleges to below engineering colleges have poor results compared to last year. The high failures in maths subject affected the results across the colleges,” a maths professor from city engineering college said.
“One of the top engineering colleges near Chennai has registered 90 per cent pass percentage last year. But, they have managed only 50 per cent during this year. Another engineering college which had 75 per cent has dropped to 50 per cent,” a source from the university said.
According to principals, the top performance is 75 per cent registered by the engineering college in Tiruvallur district. “The students’ morale has come down after the results. Even good engineering colleges got less than 20 per cent results this year,” said Professor K.Manivannan, Vice-President of the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies.
A delegation of principals planned to represent the Vice-Chancellor of Anna University about the issue next week. Officials from Anna University said that they had received complaints from the affiliated engineering colleges about the poor results in the first semester.
“The questions were from within the syllabus. The issue lies with school education. The unfamiliarity with the plus 1 subjects is the main reason for the poor results,” senior professors in the university pointed out.
The plus 1 public exam was introduced during the 2017-18 academic year. The students are in plus 2 this year. Before that many private schools used to skip the plus one lessons and used to teach plus-2 subjects for two years.
Career consultant Jayaprakash A.Gandhi said the pass percentage has come down drastically. “The university should return the money collected for revaluation if there are any changes in the marks after revaluation,” he demanded.
