BE students flounder at first hurdle

The quality of technical education in the state seems to have hit the rock bottom with just 29 per cent of first year engineering students clearing their exam this year.
Only 49,000 students of the total 1,70,000 from the state cleared the first year examination of various universities this year. Alarmingly, over 24,200 students of those who failed got single digit marks.

According to officials of higher education, the pass percentage in engineering in the previous years was always higher than 50. “The classes for the academic year began late last year. There were very few hours of instruction and students may not have been able to concentrate on studies because of the shortage of time,” said D N Reddy, vice chancellor, JNTU, Hyderabad. He said that students got barely seven months of instruction before the examination. Only 25 per cent of the 80,000 students of the JNTU, Hyderabad, have passed their first year examination.

Their counterparts in Anantapur and Kakinada have done no better. Only 20 per cent of the 50,000 students at both JNTUs have cleared their exam. In the other universities where there are around 20,000 students, the pass percentage is 22.5.

But it isn’t the shortage of time alone that is responsible for their poor performance. Some college managements, however, pointed out that the poor performance was a recurring phenomenon. “Students have many problems in the first year including medium of instruction which is always in English. Those who come from Telugu medium find it difficult to cope with instruction in the foreign language. What aggravates their problem is failure of colleges to focus on improving English language skills of these students,” said B Chennakeshava Rao, principal, Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT), Gandipet.

Officials said that failure in the first year would create a bigger problem. “Once students fail in a class they keep piling up their backlogs and drop out of the course as they would find it difficult to clear them later on,” said V S S Kumar, head, department of civil engineering, Osmania University. He said that many students would approach the university authorities every year asking for conditional promotion.

According to officials, there are many students in JNTU, Hyderabad, who have not cleared their backlogs since 1994. “Such students are not awarded degrees. There are over 70 students who have dropped out without completing the course as they have too many backlogs. The university cannot show mercy to such students,” an official from JNTU, Hyderabad said.