Chennai: Following the protest of engineering students, Anna University is likely to give them an opportunity to clear their arrears.
The top officials of Anna University along with senior professors held discussions on finding a possible solution on Monday.
Hundreds of engineering students protested against the 2017 regulations in front of Anna University and several other places on Friday (January 18) alleging that the rules are making it difficult for them to clear their arrear papers.
They demanded the withdrawal of the 2017 regulations which introduced the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) in affiliated engineering colleges.
The trigger for the protest was the poor results of November 2018 semester results in which many affiliated engineering colleges witnessed a major drop in results. In particular, fewer students cleared all papers in the third semester compared to the results of the previous semester.
Following students’ protest, the university has forwarded the issue to the standing committee.
Senior professors in the university who have participated in the meeting said that the university will hold further discussions before arriving at a conclusion on this issue.
Anna University Vice-Chancellor M.K. Surappa said that the university is working on some of the demands placed by the students.
“The university is trying to solve the issue in a systematic way. We called a meeting with senior people and will hold discussions with the academic council and board of studies in the coming days. The university will provide an opportunity to the engineering students. At the same time, we also want to produce quality engineers,” Professor Surappa told this paper.
Some professors identified the less qualifying marks to engineering courses as a root cause of this problem.
“The good engineering colleges do not have many variations in their results. The colleges with inexperienced and poor faculty members could not produce the results,” they said.
As per 2017 regulations, CBCS was introduced in affiliated engineering colleges during the last academic year.
Under this system, students who fail in theory course can only reappear along with regular students when that course is offered next time. It means if a student could not clear a course in an odd semester, he or she can only reappear for the exam when the course is offered next year.
Further, the total number of credits that a student is allowed to register per semester cannot exceed 36.
Students fear that the 36 credits limit would curtail their number reappearance to only two or three subjects along with the regular subjects. They argue that they are in danger of accumulating their arrears.
