Ushma Adhikari, a third-year student of bachelor’s in arts (BA), a four-year course at Sagarmatha College for Higher Studies affiliated with Tribhuvan University (TU), is frustrated with her university as it has already been over a year she has been waiting for her first-year exam results.
“Over the past 15 months, I learnt that believing in my university system is equivalent to deluding yourself,” says Adhikari.
Ashok Rana, a third-year student of Bsc Environmental Science at Tri-Chandra College, is also waiting for the results of the first-year exams he attended over a year ago. The delay in results has demotivated him to study. He has asked about the results announcement to college administrators several times, but they are also clueless about it.
And, there are thousands of students like them who are disappointed by Tribhuvan University’s failure to publish the results on time.
Making the new generation hopeless
There is so much anxiety and sacrifice in a student’s life when it comes to taking exams. They prepare themselves for exams with the hope of levelling up and getting results on time. However, the anxiety levels among students attending colleges associated with Tribhuvan University (TU) never decrease as it has a history of routinely missing deadlines for results publication.
The university has created despair among the students as their friends studying in other universities are levelling up and do not carry the extra burden of unceasing wait for the results.
For example, the students of Bsc physics who completed their board exam for the final year eight months back (in February) have not received their results.
Nirmal Mahat, one among thousands of TU physics students, is preparing to go abroad to study further, but he fears he might miss the fall intake if the university fails to publish the results within October. The delay has created uncertainty over his future, says Mahat, urging the university to publish the pending results as soon as possible.
Tribhuvan University has not published the results of over a dozen of exams on time, and the officials are still unsure when the pending results will be published. However, the university’s Office of the Controller of Examinations has informed that the university will most probably publish the results of the arts and science faculties within October.
Lame excuses
Tribhuvan University published the first-year exam results of the four-year BEd course on September 23 and the three-year Bachelor in Business Studies (BBS) on September 1, but both were delayed a year from the actual academic calendar. However, the results of the first-year exams of the four-year BBS course, which were held eight months back, are still pending.
Ghanashyam Thakur, the deputy controller at the university’s Office of the Controller of Examinations, says, “The university lacks human resources in the examination department, which has created hassles in publishing the results timely. In addition, some important staff members are on leave right now due to dengue infection.”
Similarly, some exams were held during Covid and the students were allowed to choose the exam centre that was easily accessible to them. This scattered students to different exam centres and as a result, many answer sheets have been misplaced, he argues.
“The misplacement of answer sheets is creating trouble for the university to publish the results on time, ” says Thakur.
Way to go now
Educationist Bidya Nath Koirala, a former head of Tribhuvan University Department of Education, blames the university’s method of checking answer sheets for the delay.
According to him, the university allows only the selected teachers to check the exam answer sheets, due to which only limited teachers can check them. This system is problematic because it deprives many teachers of checking answer sheets and it creates a shortage of human resources.
Another problem he sees is that the university does not allow the teachers to check the answer sheets of their own students. This practice must be changed, he says. “Globally, teachers are allowed to check the answer sheets of their students and this practice overcomes the crisis of human resources.”
