Covid-19 Effect: No Decision On End-Term Exams, Here's How The Pandemic Is Making Students In India Weary

Students across India majorly from Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka have started online campaign #StudentLivesMatter for cancellation of final year university exams

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New Delhi: With ‘Student Lives Matter’ trending on Twitter, one can understand the hustle and confusion going on amongst the final year undergraduate and postgraduate students regarding their end semester exams amid Coronavirus. After the Central government announced the relaxations of Unlock 1 students expected to get clarity about the exams but it has been a week since Unlock 1 started, no official announcement has been made yet which takes the students and the universities in a limbo. Different ideas have been put on the table like canceling the exams, promoting the students based on their internal assessment, or allowing them for an open book examination but the final decision is yet to taken by the HRD ministry. Before any decision is taken, it is necessary to ponder over the issues the students will face if any of the ideas are implemented.

• Reopening Colleges for Final Year Students- This will be a serious step if the colleges decide to conduct an offline exam or project presentation because most of the students returned to their homes when the lockdown started. With the daily surge of 10,000 coronavirus cases, it will be difficult for students to travel and return to their universities But the question arises, would it be right to move the students from the least affected states to the most affected ones putting their lives at risk?
• Final Results based on Internal assessment/ previous semester result: Though many students are in support of such a decision it would create a problem for those students who have been scoring average or below average or even have a backlog. Promoting them based on previous semester assessment would mean not giving them a fair opportunity to score better which might have helped them to seize better job opportunities.
• Online Open Book Exam: While universities like DU and AMU have declared to conduct open book examination students have started social media campaigns to protest against the exam system. They have been calling the examination system ‘unfair’ as many students do have appropriate resources to appear for an online exam 

According to a survey by DUTA, 85 percent of DU students are against open book exams.“A survey cum referendum conducted by DUTA with over 51,000 students has shown that close to 50 percent of students did not receive material or could not access it and only 28 percent of students could attend online lectures with some regularity. Close to 34 percent of students could not join any online class...and 85 percent have voted against the OBE,” DUTA said in a statement.

• Job Crisis: The Indian economy is at its lowest and companies- MNCs or Startups, all of them are going through a huge financial loss. Every company has resorted to laying off employees and announcing pay cuts. According to a recent statement by the World Bank, countries will be witnessing the worst recession since World War II.

Educationists have argued that passing students without conducting exams would cause this year’s batch of students to become known as “corona graduates” and hamper their job prospects. The students would receive “stepmotherly” treatment from employers during recruitment. Final-year exams also provide a fair chance to students looking to improve their performance from previous terms. Considering the present situation of employment and economy the question is how will the graduating class of 2020 find a job if even ones with 10-12 years experience are unemployed? Also Watch| Mumbai surpasses Wuhan in COVID-19 cases