Bangalore University's recent decision to revive the ‘grace marks system’ has meant celebrations for a section of students who miss passing exams by a whisdker every year. This could be happy news for some students, but many other lecturers and students of colleges affiliated to the University deny that it would do any good to the students. At the very least, many others feel that it must come with some more riders.
In an attempt to discourage students from indulging in exam malpractices, Bangalore University on October 15 announced that it would revive the grace marks system that it had struck off five years ago. According to the system which will come to effect from this academic year, 1% of the total marks for that semester would be given to each student as grace marks.
TOI report quoted present-VC B Thimme Gowda saying, "The grace marks would be deducted from another subject in which the student has scored well."
So here is an illustration: If the pass-mark is say 50, and you get 46 in Economics and 70 in Literature, then the University will give you 4 marks in Economics and reduce the same from Literature so your final tally will be the same but you get to pass the course.
Here is what it looks like to many: “we don’t want you to cheat, so we will cheat for you”.
This has clearly not gone down too well with many.
Disagreeing with the scheme, Rama Raju, a lecturer at Jyoti Nivas College(Autonomous) in Bengaluru questions, asks, "How will a student's marks in Economics compensate for Literature?"
“If it is to stop exam malpractice, the attitude of students needs to be changed. And giving 6 marks is not going to make a big different to anybody except for the poorest students,” says Annapoorna, a student of NMKRV College (Autonomous) in Bengaluru
"If the grace marks are given only to the students who have performed well in other subjects and missed passing one or two subjects by a whisker then it is fine. The student still needs to perform well enough to be able to reach the score before gracing,” Rama adds.
Rama also says that if a student has failed overall, then he or she does not deserve grace marks, because then value of the degree will be lost.
Dr. Arul Mani, Associate Professor at St. Joseph's College(Autonomous) shared the Rama's views.
Mani says, "The University's claim to stop malpractices by giving grace marks is not going to help. However, gracing can help provided it is about 2 to 3 marks which can push the student to pass.”
Roshan Sylvester, a lecturer from JNC said, "According to me this is a non-issue. People who have issues need to retrospect the importance of the issue at a time when free thinking is at risk. Our students not having a secure atmosphere to think freely is the real issue.”