Public universities in the country are still lagging behind in compensating the loss of education due to the impact of Coronavirus. The universities could not take any step. Even none of the universities have shown what step can be taken. The University Grants Commission, the sole controlling body of universities, also lacks success.
Due to these reasons, a whole semester in public universities may be delayed. And it is apprehended that it will take at least two years to handle the push of this entanglement.
All educational institutions in the country, including universities, have been closed since March 16. The holiday has been extended till August 31. Meanwhile, the government says educational institutions will not be opened until the situation returns to normal.
Speaking to present and former vice-chancellors, teachers and students of several universities, it was learned that if the leave does not increase after August 31, this six-month vacation will be a session jam of 9 months to one year.
In some cases, new semesters can be started in October-November. However, the existing semester will generally be extended till December. Because the examinations cannot be taken by opening the institution. In this case, one and a half to two months of preparation time should be needed.
The University Grants Commission, the controlling body of universities, does not have much of alternative. UGC policymakers have so far come up with two alternative ideas to mitigate the existing disadvantages of higher education. One is to take the current semester exams in a special arrangement on the course to finish the class activities taken before the deleting general holiday. If this is possible, the six-month session will be reduced here.
Then the semester class lessons started in July are taken online. If it is possible to implement these two works, there will be no session jam.
The other option is to make a two-year plan by accepting the session jam if it is not possible to take the test now. That is, whenever the campus is operational, the course activities and laboratory work will continue normally. In this case some ‘topics’ of the course (subject of the lesson) may be omitted.
The University Grants Commission believes that the development of the situation will depend on how efficiently a university is dealing with it. In this case, ‘smart’ leadership and sincerity are very much needed.
A former vice-chancellor of a public university when talked has said that almost no university has the capacity to deal with the real damage in its current state. He thinks that there is no such thing as infrastructure, knowledge or skilled manpower. Because they did not develop that way.