Letters: Eduacation and evaluation

This refers to T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan's column "Two suggestions for Ms Irani" (Marginal utility, June 28). The stated rationale for offering a two-year programme for undergraduate (UG) courses in liberal arts to students is that the current course content is too thin to spread the learning to three years. If so, the generic reason is that much of what used to be taught in UG courses has now been pushed back to the schools after the introduction of the Class 12th board exams. The result is that school-going students have heavy mental and physical (as measured by the weight of their school bags) workload that gives inadequate time to comprehend and learn with understanding.

If each college holds its own examination, there will be differences of effective learning and evaluation. Potential employers will find it difficult to compare students' academic worth.

What is needed is to standardise the size of universities in terms of the number of students and colleges under them, so that they don't become too bureaucratic.

Y G Chouksey Pune

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