VELLORE: Just days after Thiruvalluvar University battled accusations of ‘reusing’ exam question papers in its third-semester exams, the varsity’s postgraduate mathematics students and faculty were annoyed to find a question paper from April 2023 distributed for the Real Analysis II arrear exam held on Saturday.
Worse, students writing their third-semester exam in Operations Research, found that several of the questions were from the 2021-22 syllabus. The students are part of a batch for whom the syllabus was revised in 2022-23.
The varsity’s vice-chancellor Dr T Arumugam admitted there was a problem. Speaking to TNIE, he said the person involved had accepted his mistake and necessary action will be taken. “We will launch an inquiry regarding this and take necessary steps.
The university receives four sets of questions prepared by professors from various universities, which are checked by the scrutiny committee. From the four sets, the controller of examination chooses one. The mistake lies in the initial stage, where the person setting the question paper repeats questions from previous years.” He added that students would not be affected by this and asked why the media was so interested in the issue.
However, Roseline, a professor in the mathematics department at Voorhees College, pointed out that the repetition of question papers has an impact on the quality of education. Further, using questions from the old syllabus in the question paper also raises concerns, she said.
‘Questions from old syllabus’
“Questions worth at least 50 marks in the paper are from the old syllabus and students will now be given full 50 marks due to the error,” she said. The V-C, however, said it had not yet been decided if full marks would be given.
“The university is creating confusion among students,” said Dr T Aasif Ahmed, zonal chairman of Association of University Teachers. “There is no benefit in writing exams while knowing what questions will appear. The university is just playing with students’ education,” said a student of Voorhees College.