Mumbai University reintroduces old ATKT rule

Mumbai University has reintroduced the old ATKT rule that had been amended in 2013-14 and allowed ATKT only to those students who had not appeared for the exams due to genuine reasons. As a result of this rule, students who failed semester exams were unable to advance to the next semester and had to repeat the semester. However, the rule has been repealed and ATKT for semester exams for allstudents has been reintroduced.Speaking about the revival of the old ATKT rule, a member of the academic council of the MU said that the ATKT rule had been amended to be in line with the credit-based grading system wherein credits earned by students in each semester were accumulated and added up to the final semester results. “The rule was amended to ensure that students do not skip exams and if they did so they would have to appear for the entire semester all over again. Only students who had a genuine reason for skipping semester exams were allowed ATKT as per the amended rule,” said the member.

However, after some stakeholders pointed out that such a rule would be detrimental to the education of students and drop out rate would increase, the academic council appointed a review committee that recommended doing away of the amended rule and reintroduction of the old ATKT rule, wherein students were allowed to continue studies at their own pace. The academic council accepted the recommendations recently and has brought back the old ATKT rule to be effective from the academic year 2015-16.

According to Dr Madhu Nair, dean of commerce faculty, MU, students should have the liberty to choose how they want to study and hence having stringent rules was not acceptable. “The academic council has done well to repeal the amended rule in the best interests of the students. Now colleges will have to conduct ATKT exams for the first four semesters in October and April,” said Dr Nair.

This is the second of such decisions that has been taken by the academic council for the benefit of students. Another rule that was repealed by the academic council was of scaling down of internal marks. The council deemed that as scaling down of marks was intended for the 60:40 pattern, the rule was irrelevant after the pattern was changed to 75:25.

Source |Asian Age | 24 August 2015