Attention: National University authorities
M Sadeq, Chairman, Dept. of Management Tejgaon College, Farmgate, Dhaka
The results of Honours part two examinations 2003 (held in May/ June 2003) Under the four-year Honours system were published a few days ago. Examinees who secured 165 marks in aggregate (33 per cent) out of 500 marks have been declared promoted to part II and those who secured less than 33 per cent have not been promoted and they will be required to reappear as irregular examinees at part-I examinations, 2004 in all the five papers of part-I . The publishing of the results took nearly one year and the examinees who by this time got themselves admitted into part-II provisionally have by now completed their course and are taking preparation for appearing at the part-II final examinations. At this stage, if they are to reappear in all the five papers of part-I for having failed to secure 33 per cent marks on an average, they will not only suffer financial loss , but also lose a year from their academic career . The minimum pass marks for an Honours paper is 25 per cent and if any paper carries less than 25 per cent marks it is treated as crushed. Now if an examinee passes in all the papers with minimum pass marks of 25, he is actually required to secure 125 marks out of 500 to get promotion to part-II. It is not understood how and why the National University has fixed 33 per cent as the pass marks for promotion to part-II. The four-year Honours comprises four parts: part-I, part-II , part-III and part-IV. The class of examinees shall be finalised on the average of total marks of all the parts after the part-IV final examinations. It is therefore justifiable to promote all the examinees who have secured total marks of 125 out of 500 (25%) and allow them the option to appear for improvement with part-I examinees of 2004 in the papers that have been crushed and also in those papers that have less than 45 per cent marks. Barring the examinees from appearing at part-II final examinations, 2004 shall not be a justice to them since the publication of results was unusually delayed and they have already reached the end of the session of part-II. They are the first batch under four-year Honours system and they were not informed earlier by any circular of the NU that the pass marks for promotion to part-II shall be 33 per cent, instead of 25 per cent. The colleges offering Honours courses run under various limitations. The NU being the controlling authority cannot claim to have established academic discipline in the colleges that have been allowed to offer Honours and Masters courses. The very few colleges of Dhaka city that are able to fulfil expectations of public university teachers can only meet at best 50 per cent needs of the students. The rest of the colleges of Dhaka and remote areas that use the name of university college are only so named in their signboards and it is clear by now to the members of the public that most of these colleges are hollow inside. A college of Dhaka city that is compelled to teach nearly ten thousand students of an international language called English with only six/ seven regular teachers cannot expect to meet 25 per cent needs of the students who study Honours and Masters. Since the NU has not been able to ensure a minimum quality of teaching and academic discipline of the Honours colleges, it is not fair to create problems for the innocent students at the time of finalising their results. Raising the pass marks from 25 per cent to 33 per cent rightly calls for raising the quality of teaching first. The NU that is controlled, so to say, by the teachers of Dhaka University should at least follow the minimum conditions that are followed by the latter, particularly regarding the number of teachers in a subject, the capacity of a section of a class, the number of classes that a course deserves to finish, the tutorials, the viva etc. The first batch of three-year Honours part-I under NU who had to appear in only one honours paper were also made victim of such an injudicious decision. The pass marks for them for the one Honours paper was fixed at 36 percent. Those who failed to secure less than 36 marks were declared unsuccessful. When the point of 25 per cent pass marks followed by Dhaka University was brought to the notice of NU by some quarters, the decision was instantly revised and those who secured minimum pass marks of 25% were declared promoted to part-II. The case of the first batch of four-year Honours course is just the repetition of what happened to the first batch of three-year Honours course students. This is quite unexpected and undesirable. The NU is requested to kindly review the issue in the greater interest of the students .
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