The Negative outreach to the new voters in 18-22 year range
The mess in the education system of Maharashtra is real and very bad. Since 2014, this mess has increased tremendously, inconveniencing lacs of students and their parents. It is a case study on how to reach the first time voter in an absolute negative fashion
Following are some of the major chaos creating incidents in last 4 years, hich are being repeated annually
1. Admission to junior college: This process has been online for nearly a decade and had been working superbly till 2014. After the SSC exams, Students registered online with their choice of colleges. The marks were populated directly via technology, and students were given admissions based on their choices. In 3 rounds of admissions, 99 of students used to get admission, with very low percentage of Heartburns. Since 2015, the process has remained the same, but is in quagmire. Giving in to that small percentage of whiners, the process got derailed and it has been downhill since then. This year, Junior college admissions have continued till October end, and still there is a lot of heart burn. The IT vendors have been changed constantly, but service has been extremely poor. In Mumbai alone, nearly 3 lac students take part in these admissions and the anger is palpable.
2. At university level, the mess is even more acute. Examination dates are changed for whole semesters, just 2-3 days before the scheduled start of the same. Last Year, this happened with B.Com examinations, and 5 days before the start, the exams were postponed by a month. Over 1.1 lac students who appear for B.com exams in Mumbai faced serious inconveniences, along with their families
3. This Year, BMS exams have been postponed by a month, a week before examinations
4. This year, one paper of the B.com exams was postponed by 15 days, a week before the exams
5. University level examinations were introduced for vth and VI semester graduate program like B.com. This meant that students were allotted different colleges for writing the exams. On the day of the first examination, it was declared that the last 2 (of the total 6 exams) would be conducted in respective colleges and not at the given centres
6. Concessions given to special children were notified in 2017, but no follow up has been done by colleges or the university. Parents and students had to go through university circulars and find out for themselves and educate the colleges about the same.
7. Mumbai University has lost its NAAC certification 19 months back. They have still not re applied to get it. The first result has been that the Open university of Mumbai has been de-recognised this year, and 25000 students who have taken admission (30th October was the last date) are left in limbo (in today’s 28th November newspapers).
I can list a lot more of smaller issues, but they are more procedural and a mindset of the people in the university. You will agree, that for the middle class, Education of the children is the biggest thing. And this much of mess is hardly conducive for a positive response as voters also.
What do you think?