Semester System: Four public universities struggling

Students are deprived of reaping the rewards of the semester system in four public universities due to mismanagement by the authorities.

Failure to publish examination results on time, absence of teaching assistants (TA), and playing catch-up to complete a six-month schedule in three to four months are reasons why the semester system is failing to bring the desired results, observed students and academics.

They also blamed the admission system where students are enrolled annually, effectively preventing an unsuccessful student from repeating a class in the first semester before the completion of the one-year cycle. Lack of teachers and classrooms are other structural issues students and academics pointed out as obstacles to the semester system running smoothly.

With the coronavirus outbreak and ongoing indefinite shutdown of public universities, the semester system is set to be hampered further. While some private universities started offering online classes, Dhaka University and most other public universities are yet to do so -- citing lack of internet access of all students.

In May, DU authorities announced they were considering cutting upcoming weekends and holidays and arranging additional classes in order to prevent a looming session jam and make up for academic losses during the closure.

Many countries including China, the US, and the UK, have adopted the semester system to provide focused and quality education through intense student-teacher engagement.

Four public universities -- Dhaka, Jahangirnagar, Chattogram and Rajshahi – currently have 83 departments and institutes under the semester system.

Of these, 75 departments have failed to publish their last semester results within the scheduled time, The Daily Star found after going through the exam controller offices' result publishing dates.

Most of the departments took 18-22 weeks to publish the results.

According to the DU semester system guidelines, results must be published within eight weeks of a course examination. Rajshahi University rules say results of semester finals must be published within three weeks, and Jahangirnagar University rules say 10 weeks. Chattogram University has no rules about this.

DU has the highest number of departments and institutes under the semester system, 49. RU has 17, CU has 10, and JU has seven.

 "I got my final MBA examination results after 33 weeks," said a DU postgraduate student.

A ninth-batch student of the department, he added that he could not prepare accordingly for the final exams due to delayed in-course results.

"Most of the time we had to appear in the final exams without knowing the in-course results," said the student, preferring not to be named. 

Many public university students said they appeared in the running semester examinations without knowing whether they have passed in the previous semester.

A third-year student of accounting and information systems at Jahangirnagar University said his department published the fourth semester results four days before the fifth semester final on January 26.

He said he could not appear in the exam despite preparing for them, since he failed in two subjects in the fourth semester examination.

"The fourth semester final examination was held at least seven months ago. Had it been published on time, I could have prepared differently. Now, I will have to start again from scratch," said the disgruntled student.  

He also alleged two teachers were yet to announce in-course results and such delays are a common picture in other departments too.

In-course results constitute 25-50 percent marks of the total grade, varying from department to department.

CU and RU students face similar problems, The Daily Star found.

Several JU students alleged their teachers remain indifferent for the first two to three months and only become active in the last half of a semester -- hurriedly taking classes and in-course examinations, putting undue pressure on the students.

Due to this, they are deprived of quality lessons, the students said.

Some academics also acknowledged the problems, adding that the semester system was introduced without proper planning and the necessary logistics.

The system is not functioning well here as university authorities have introduced the concept without fulfilling certain prerequisites like TA appointments and building new classrooms, said Syed Manzoorul Islam, a retired professor of DU's English department.

Prof Syed Manzoorul Islam said the numbers of students in almost all departments in the university are very high.

"This is one of the reasons that teachers remain busy with evaluating assignments and answer papers instead of conducting classes," he added. Teaching assistants shoulder some of this burden in universities worldwide.

Tanzimuddin Khan, a professor of DU's international relations department, said the entire semester system is ambiguous here.  

"The university authorities enroll students once a year here, something you will not find in any other university in the world where the semester system is in place," he said.

According to a number of US and UK university websites, one of the features of the semester system is to enroll students each semester -- a session of six months or half of an academic year.

In a semester system, students have to complete a total of eight semesters in their four-year bachelor's degree and two semesters in a year-long master's degree.

If one does not finish the entire semester or one subject at a specific time, he or she may end up with the next batch and thus a student is less likely to waste six months of their education.

According to article 11.2 of the DU semester system guidelines, a student is allowed to improve grades either through a supplementary examination within 45 days under the same examination committee or with the following batch. In reality, not a single department has taken supplementary examinations so far and the "following batch" comes once each year, not every six months.

The other three universities have no rules on supplementary examinations. 

A lack of adequate classrooms is a common situation in these universities, said students, who often have to stake out empty classrooms in order for classes to even be held.

"We have to look for empty classrooms before attending the class as most of the departments want to take classes in the first half of the day," said a DU mass communication and journalism department student.

"There are many classes where 150 to 250 students learn at a time," said Prof Tanzimuddin Khan.

In a six-month semester, 15 weeks have been kept for classes, a week's vacation for exam preparations, and three weeks for final examinations -- according to the Course Curriculum and Rules of DU's semester system.

Besides scheduled classes, group discussions, presentations, class tests, assignments, term paper submissions and mid-term exams have to be taken on the remaining days.

DU was the first among public universities to have introduced the semester system in the country with a view to reducing session jams, improving the quality of education, and publishing exam results by the grade or credit method.

According to the DU website, the Faculty of Business Studies introduced it in the 1977-78 session followed by the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, which launched it in 2006-07.

Jahangirnagar University's economics is the lone department that has returned to the conventional yearly examination system four years after joining the semester bandwagon in 2001-02.

"We had to cancel the semester system as we didn't get enough time to finish our syllabus in due time," Mohammad Amzad Hossain, chairman of the department, told The Daily Star.

DU Vice-Chancellor Professor Md. Akhtaruzzaman said, "We accept any proposal that can serve the benefits of the university students. The semester system is running very well here; we will introduce such a system in some other departments consequently."

"We are trying to publish the results faster," he added.

DU's VC told this correspondent that demands for appointing TAs from recent graduates among the departments are longstanding and will be met soon after completing all the procedures in this regard.

[Our DU, RU, CU and JU correspondents contributed to this report.]