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Five stars for semester system

The syllabus comes in manageable lots, courses now have names and it keeps students on their toes. There sure is a lot in favour of the semester system, finds out Tarangini Sriraman

Autonomy for degree colleges gives them much leeway in deciding their own syllabus; the stronghold of the University Grants Commission is also relaxed in many ways. Of late though, the UGC has been encouraging autonomous colleges to take up the semester system.

While some students think that the semester system comes in the way of their study schedules, most others believe that it is an arrangement that gives them a strong foundation and conceptual clarity.

The good thing about the semester system that we have is that our subjects are dealt course-wise, says Aisha of Nizam College. For instance, one of the subjects that I have chosen, geography is divided systematically and we do courses like oceanography, human geography, and climatology every semester. Shashwathi Chowdhary who teaches political science at St. Francis Degree College for Women agrees when she says, "Before we introduced the semester system in Francis, subjects were not subdivided into courses. But now, every course has to be subtitled, and the students have to do one course per semester. This makes concepts much more clear," she says.

Less load

And there is no denying that the study load is lessened considerably, says a BA student of St. Francis, Sailu. You take one thing at a time, you actually know the framework of what you are studying, she says. She however adds that the flipside is that revision which is the asset of the other system of yearly examinations and internals is not available here.

Varsha, a B.Sc. student of St. Ann's, Mehdipatnam differs when she says that though they don't have a semester system in their college, the system has been satisfactory. "Though my college has four internals, one quarterly, pre-finals and one final examination, this arrangement is more suitable to the laidback `study style' of degree college students."

What's more, we are not burdened with too much syllabus for every internal. "Small tests, I think are preferable to semester-end examinations," she says.

Flip side

Others who find the semester system unfair to students include Progressive Democratic Students' Union state member, Poola Nagaraju.

"The problem with the semester system is that it comes with a whole set of related constraints. Often you find that the fees have increased, because of the added courses or because more efforts go into teaching a course. More people are likely to drop out if the fees are increased."

If fees increase, the scholarships must also increase correspondingly. Also at a time when there is lack of manpower, that is, there are many vacancies that have not yet been filled, introducing this will only add to the confusion, he says. Students Federation of India city committee member, Bheem has a different take on the semester system. Though the stipulated period of a semester is 90 days, the teaching time has reduced considerably after the semester system was introduced in colleges. We are given a month's holiday to prepare for exams at the end of each semester. The semester system places the burden on the students, he says.

Teachers take it all

Former Controller of Examinations at Nizam's College and English lecturer, C. Muralikrishna however says that the semester system clearly enhances the workload of the teachers and the management. Evaluation and assessment are done more systematically, he says. But he adds that even with the semester system, the degree college lot can be very distracted. Especially with BPOs and companies coming to the campus, it is hard for students to remain focussed, semester system or no semester system, he says.

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