Calcutta University will start its postgraduate classes a month after the deadline fixed by the higher education department.
The university will hold the entrance test to screen students for admission into master’s programmes on October 16 and 17. Campuses close for a fortnight-long Puja vacation on October 18.
“The counselling for admission of our own students has started from Monday. The admission tests will be held on October 16 and 17 to screen external students. Classes will start after the Puja vacation,” CU registrar Debasis Das told Metro.
The registrar told this newspaper on September 30 that the university would start classes before the Puja vacation.
Twenty per cent of the postgraduate seats are reserved for students from colleges not affiliated with CU who are admitted through admission tests.
Counselling on the basis of marks for home university students (students from the colleges affiliated with the university) started on Monday.
Since courses have to be started jointly — for home and external students — classes can only be started from early November, said a CU official.
After Metro reported on October 1 that the university would not be able to start its postgraduate classes from October 3 complying with guidelines issued by the department, CU’s teachers’ association wrote to vice-chancellor Santa Datta last Thursday. The letter requested her to take necessary steps to complete the admission process at the earliest “to avoid an unprecedented situation”.
Why did CU miss the deadline?
“We took time to publish the fourth-semester review results of those who passed the sixth semester but failed in the fourth semester, in an attempt to make them eligible for admission. As for the admission tests, they could not be held for some reasons,” said Das.
Sanatan Chattopadhyay, secretary of the teachers’ association, said this was unfortunate at a time when other universities, like Presidency and Jadavpur, have complied with the deadline.
He blamed CU’s failure to conduct tests for the delay.
The letter to the VC, signed by Chattopadhyay, said: “The university authorities called for a joint meeting of the faculty council on 24th August, 2023 and the HODs (head of departments) were instructed to submit the relevant question papers by 7 th September. All of the HODs complied to meet this deadline.”
Chattopadhyay said they could not figure out what prevented the university from holding the admission tests after the question papers were submitted by September 7.
“This is nothing but an administrative failure,” he said.
The undergraduate final semester results were declared by August 31 across universities.
“Had they conducted the tests on time, the classes could have been started well ahead of the Puja vacation. We are concerned because a delayed start will make it difficult to complete the syllabus,” Chattopadhyay said.
The education department had announced the schedule for the start of classes on July 13.