Education is about teaching, learning skills and knowledge. Education also means helping people to learn how to do things and encouraging them to think about what they learn. It is also important for educators to teach ways to find and use information.
Through education, the knowledge of society, country, and of the world is passed on from generation to generation. In democracies, through education, children and adults are supposed to learn how to be active and effective citizens.
The introduction of semester scheme in the valley has created fuss and failed to fulfill the dreams of students at both UG and PG level. Sparked by other foreign universities it has failed to declare the exacts results of UG ist semester on 19th January 2018 in which 90% of the students from Kashmir valley were declared unsuccessful. Semester system is at fault if we talk about Kashmir valley it doesn’t suit the situation and the prevailing circumstances. In a place like Kashmir, semester system can’t become successful. Each & every day in Kashmir, either there is a killing, encounter, strike or something else which restricts students to go to their colleges. They are not able to attend the classes regularly. I fail to understand the mind of the advocates of semester system that on what basis they got semester system introduced here. Aren’t they aware about the day to day situation in Kashmir?
Aren’t they aware about the fact that why Govt announced mass promotions & cut down some portions of syllabus for some classes. All the students which fall under Semester system & CBCS category are having a huge anger against KU officials. The semester system has resulted into wastage of precious time of students. The future of the students is in a great danger or we can say future of Kashmir as well. For some students, these moves become a reason to give up on their studies. They lost their interest in studies. The question that arises who will compensate the loss of students in the valley? Why should we continue with such a system which is creating fuss and acts as a border in the academic progresses of the student. .The semester system has been introduced by the govt to improve the quality education in the valley instead of improving quality education it has ruined the dreams of many students .The students who were enrolled in the first semester in 2015 are presently appearing in their Fifth-semester examination, which was supposed to be conducted in December last year.
Similarly, the students who were enrolled in the first semester Batch (2016) appeared in the second-semester examination recently and are currently in BG 3RD Semester even though they should have completed the fourth semester by now. University of Kashmir (KU) has continuously failed to conduct exams and declare results of various under-graduate and post-graduate courses in time bound manner putting the students on the risk of delay in degree completion.
There is no reason why the universities should not reconsider going back to the annual system which was a success for hundreds of years. If we can improve college administration and put maximum emphasis on teaching and counseling of students, we can do much better in the annual system.
This is the level of carelessness of KU about the future of their students. We can also say that by continuing with the semester system they want to mint more money from students. They have left the students into frustration & over burdened. Furthermore, there were also multiple protests from the students against KU regarding the issue of fee. Students said that KU had increased the yearly fee which a student of a poor family can’t afford, but no action was taken in this regard, but University authorities as well as Govt have remained silent & not bothering about the future of students. Our future is dying; this is the matter of future of students.
The political and bureaucratic set-up needs to hold discussions with the university authorities to resolve this issue. Further the college professor’s must take up this issue to the university administration. The Minister of Education Syed Altaf Bukhari is requested to look into this burning issue & withdraw the Semester & CBCS system as soon as possible. One can only hope that the honorable Minister will ensure the academic progress of the college students. We had been already noticing the positive & commendable changes by our minister & we are also expecting to revamp the changes at undergraduate level.
(Author is a B.A student at Govt. Degree College Kangan . The views of the author are his own)
