Kerala University bids goodbye to a 44-year-old tradition

University of Kerala bidding to 44 year annual degree system and switching over to credit and semester system is an effort to sail smoothly with the present trend. Nevertheless it would not bring any substantive gain. This is not an isolated opinion but many teachers working now in colleges join with this. The foremost reason is that all colleges in Kerala experience a staff-crunch and without adequate number of teaching staff the semester system cannot be carried out successfully. Teachers in guest faculty are working for a wage and they are not competent enough to make grade in the credit and semester system.

More intriguing is the undue importance of social service in the proposed system. In most of the colleges in Kerala currently what is largely going on is social service and no time for teaching class. Cattle feeding, thattukada running, mosquito census are some of the existing services available in the colleges now. With the introduction of more social services the colleges will turn into a market place where teaching and learning process will be a leisure work. As many as 20 different forums working in the college will bring a pandemonium comparable to one that is full swing at CMS College, Kottayan at present. Offering additional open courses to students, who are not at all interested teaching-learning processes, is very prying to note.

The clause that attendance would fetch grades and each student should have not less than 75 per cent attendance for all semesters will open more war grounds in colleges. The teachers would have to read threatening SMS from student outfits for denying attendance to their workers. It will be a tough time for teachers to manage second-rate degree course students who are destined to join these colleges because of denial of admission in professional courses. The Education Minister had made the school education already a mess. The proposed choice based credit system, will extent this confusion to Arts and Science colleges too. Let us wait and see number of years the students admitted to the newly introduced credit and semester would take to get their first degree.

K A Solaman