The winter exam session at the University of Mumbai (MU) will start in a month, the varsity has announced. The exam season will begin with fifth semester tests of BCom on October 26, followed by BA and BCom on October 30.
The three courses account for the bulk of undergraduate students at MU-affiliated colleges. Most of the other exams will begin a month later.
Total Number of Exams
The varsity will hold as many as 439 regular and repeat exams - 68 for humanities and law, 63 for commerce and management, 240 for science and technology and 68 for interdisciplinary faculties - in the winter session. On Monday, the university released the starting dates of all the tests, and the complete schedule of 64 of them. The detailed timetable for the rest of the exams will be announced later, said the varsity.
Challenges from Previous Sessions
The last two exam sessions had witnessed high rates of failure, as students faced written tests after being evaluated online during two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Only 34.25% of students had cleared the fifth semester BCom exam held in the last year's winter session. There was little improvement in the repeat exam held earlier this year, with around 49% students failing in their second attempt.
According to a university official, the large-scale failures will add to the varsity's burden, which carries out final-year exams across 800 affiliated colleges. "We usually witness passing percentages around 60-70%. However, with majority of the students failing the previous exams, there will be more candidates in this cycle," said the official.
Delays in Result Declaration
The last exam session was also marked by delays in declaring the results of several exams, especially those belonging to law courses. The varsity has blamed the delay on erroneous bar codes, centre and question paper codes filled by students, which also led to many of the students being marked absent in the result despite appearing for the exam. To address this issue, MU had last month issued a circular directing the block supervisors and chief conductors at exam centres to ensure details are filled accurately.
