Mumbai University News - Alumni decry Mumbai University rot

MUMBAI: This year, exam season in Mumbai University has been a testing time (pun intended) for students even by the varsity's normally shoddy standards. Hall tickets not reaching students in time, examination centres being changed at the last minute, question papers leaking and wrong papers surfacing in the exam hall added considerably to the student community's stress levels. Now, as the latter await their results, there's more angst in store-to put examiners who have struck work in their place, the university, in a vertiginous fall even by its own standards, has reduced the minimum qualification necessary for this job. Teachers with a mere one year of teaching experience will now decide the career of hundreds of thousands of final-year students.

Eminent citizens-those who attended Mumbai University and went to its affiliated colleges during its more illustrious days-unsurprisingly responded with anger and dismay. Historian Arun Tikekar went nostalgic about the days when the university had teachers who never looked at their watches and would continue discussions till the next prof walked in. He says the university has a lot to correct in its classrooms and out of them too and expressed the hope that public-spirited people will raise their voices against the regular bungling that takes place here.

Actor Farooq Sheikh believes, like most others, that Bombay University, as it was called in his student days, has been gradually eaten away due to political interference. "The glorious days will come back only if someone files a PIL in the high court and the judiciary comes down heavily on the university and directs it to uproot the rot," he said. Former India hockey captain Viren Rasquinha, on his part, likened the university to the deplorable state of Indian hockey and said the institution had reached a new low in the measure adopted by it to get papers assessed in time. "Lowering eligibility is no solution," he said. "There should be a system in place by which smooth and efficient examinations are conducted and immense accountability while correcting examination sheets is also exercised."