Academicians voice discontent over JU's decision to rope in external experts

Kolkata: A section of academicians in the city have written to the authorities of Jadavpur University expressing their discontent over the idea of roping in external experts to conduct admission tests in humanities.

It may be mentioned that a dozen of such academicians including Sankha Ghosh, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Sukanta Chaudhuri, Anandadeb Mukhopadhyay to name a few have opined that the teachers of the reputed institution are the best persons to assess the merit of the students seeking admissions.

"The teachers of the institution have been involved in selecting students for admissions for years now and the latter have been passing it with flying colours with so many spread across the globe. We feel that the new process, if introduced will not be able to make proper assessment of a student's merit. The present teachers will be demoralized over such a decision and this may result in deterioration of the standard of education," the letter states.

Representatives of Jadavpur University Teachers' Association (Juta) had called on Vice-Chancellor Suranjan Das on Monday, asking him to scrap the proposal of involving external experts in the admission process or face their boycott. The meeting of the admission committee was held on Tuesday and the university was not able to reach any consensus in this regard.

A meeting of the working committee will be held on Wednesday. "We have received the letter. We are presently not in a position to comment on it," JU registrar Chiranjib Bhattacharjee said. State Education minister Partha Chatterjee said: "I am of the opinion that the admission process should be the same for all the subjects. If admissions for Engineering and Technology is on the basis of marks then why not for humanities."

Admission tests have already been pushed back by a week. With no consensus on who will set the question papers, conduct invigilation, evaluate answer scripts and then select students, some have expressed doubts over whether the process can be completed by July 31, when classes are scheduled to commence.