The Delhi University collected nearly Rs 9.5 crore from around 1.4 lakh students towards fees for the examinations that are underway, thanks to the transparency introduced with the Centre’s Samarth portal, officials said.
This is almost double the amount the university previously fetched from exam fees. Earlier, several colleges would not entirely transfer the exam fees to the university as there was no effective mechanism to ensure checks and balances, they said.
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The university has been conducting open book exams for students since last year due to COVID-19 and the semester exams began on November 30. A minimum examination fees of Rs 500 is levied per semester on each student while he has to pay another Rs 200 for each practical exam.
Ex-students appearing for re-exams need to pay an additional Rs 500. “Samarth has made exam fees collection a centralised process. Earlier, colleges would collect this money but many wouldn’t pay to the university in full. It was difficult to keep a track of the number of students and the corresponding fee from various colleges under the university,” an official from the university said.
“Another issue was that several colleges used to collect examination fees at the time of a student’s admission itself and hence it would not be clear what papers the student would opt for. So, it was quite a possibility that either the student was paying higher or lower than the exact amount,” he said.
According to the official, the university has asked the colleges to refund the exam fees to the students in case they it during admission to the course. DS Rawat, Dean, Examinations, said it took the university more than three months to upload details of nearly 1.4 lakh students on Samarth.
“This time, students filled their examination forms on the portal. This solved several logistical issues that we were facing earlier,” he said. A student needs to score an average of at least 50 per cent marks in the first and second semesters in order to be promoted to the third.
Highlighting the loopholes earlier, Rawat said, “Earlier, sometimes, colleges would promote students to the third semester and even allow them to take exams without ascertaining whether they had cleared the previous semesters,” he said. Rawat said the university’s in-house software, too, was not equipped to check such cases.
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“Now, students who have not cleared their previous semester do not even receive their result and cannot open examination forms for the new semester,” he said, adding the portal carries all academic information of every student. “Even when the student is filling the form, their subjects and paper codes are ticked beforehand.
Earlier, students had to fill their details manually and key in the paper codes, sometimes leading to errors,” he said. The university is planning to use the data on students for printing their degree certificates and hand them over during convocation.
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