Students blame engineering college for tweaking university regulations

Students of DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering at Vile Parle (west) have blamed the faculty members for their dominance and enforcement of various rules. The students have raised issues that the faculty has tweaked Mumbai University (MU) rules, given false promises, not provided necessary facilities, forced them to attend lectures and write extra examination papers.

This college wants the students to secure 75% attendance in every subject in every semester. While, the MU rule states that it is mandatory for every student to have minimum 50% attendance for each course and average attendance has to be 75% of the total number of lectures, practicals and tutorials.

And in this college if the students fail to secure this attendance mark they are asked to write extra papers and submit assignments as part of their term work.

The students do not have any say in this matter and have to do what the faculty tells them to do to clear their semesters. A student said, “First, the college has tweaked the university rule. Second, the professors tell us to write extra examination papers according to their mood. Some of us who lack attendance have to write three papers while some have to write all six papers. And these papers are not even checked by the faculty.”

The average fees of one student is more than Rs 1 lakh for a year. “We pay a high amount of fees so the college should at least provide us with basic facilities. Even though we have a space for a workshop we are not allowed to use it. The college promised us various things during admission but the ground reality is different,” a student added.

The college is managed by the Shri Vile Parle Kelavani Mandal (SVKM) public charitable trust. Hari Vasudevan, principal of the college, said, “We follow the attendance guideline provided by the university. We want the students to be serious about the course as engineering is a practical field which has application of theory so we ensure that the attendance system is accurate. Also, we are currently in the process of creating an in-house workshop space which will be ready soon.”

College authorities mentioned that the trust has the ultimate power to decide the attendance rules. A senior official of the college said, “The trust is stricter than the other management therefore it has tweaked the university rule and compelled students to secure the high attendance in every subject.”

This college wants the students to secure 75% attendance in every subject in every semester