PU Evening Studies Dept the laggard

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Advertisement

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 2

The Department of Evening Studies, Panjab University, has put up worst show among all departments with over 80 per cent students failing in BA, MA Punjabi, MA History and MA English exams alone in 2016-17. The only saving grace was BCom.

In total, 445 students were enrolled in BA, BCom, MA Economics, MA Punjabi, MA History, MA Political Science and MA English, but over 71 per cent couldn’t pass the exams.

The Department of Evening Studies is a multi-disciplinary department of the PU and offers variety of courses.

As per the data provided by the department under the National Institution Ranking Framework (NIRF) to the PU’s Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), in BA, it had 184 students in 2016-17 with 156 boys and 28 girl candidates. But just 30 boys and seven girls passed, and out of that, a total of 18 passed in second division. The total pass percentage was 20.1 per cent which implied close to 80 per cent students failed. The pass percentage of boys’ was just 19.23 per cent.

In MA English, a total of 42 students took admission, but just eight passed (19 per cent). It implied over 81 per cent students failed.

In MA History, there were 27 students, but just four passed (17.39 per cent), which implied 83 per cent students failed. There were four girls in the class and all failed.

In MA Political Science, 48 students appeared and just 12 passed, which implied 75 per cent students failed. In MA Punjabi, just five students passed out of 24. Here too, around 80 per cent failed.

In MA Economics, 51 students were there and just 20 passed (39.22 per cent). It implied over 60 per cent failed. In BCom, however, 42 passed out of 69 (60.7 per cent), which implied about 40 per cent failed.

Prof Gurpal Singh, chairman, Department of Evening Studies, said, "Non-seriousness of students is behind the poor show. Earlier, we had given admissions to dropouts. But now we have reduced BA seats from 341 to 200, so we have got good students. We are now strict with attendance. Our results are set to improve now." 

He added “A number of students take admission in evening studies just to stay in the PU for one reason or other.”

“We have reputed teachers but we need to change admission policy in post graduation. There should be no distinction in admission process for morning and evening batches. More hostel seats should be allocated for evening studies students,” said senator Prof Keshav Malhotra.

When randomly results of other teaching departments were checked for 2016-17, it came out that most of the departments have around 70 per cent or above pass percentage. The Department of Laws has over 90 per cent pass percentage in undergraduate course. MA Geography has over 87 per cent pass percentage, there is 100 per cent result in MSc Botany and in MSc Biophysics. Over 80 per cent students passed in MSc Biochemistry. In Hindi Department also, the pass percentage is over 93 per cent.

The History Department has 68 per cent students passing MA History while English and Cultural Studies has posted over 78 per cent pass percentage in MA English.