No marks,report cards at Presidency

Under the new system,undergraduate students will be awarded grades on a 10-point scale at the end of each semester and also at the end of their programmes.

“There will be no marks and no report card. The students will get just a semester grade point average (SGPA) at the end of each semester and a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) at the end of the entire course,” university registrar Pradip Sengupta told The Indian Express.

On Monday,the university came out with a merit list of students. The classes for nearly 450 students admitted in 18 undergraduate departments will start from July 11.

“We have divided the entire undergraduate programme into six semesters and 120 credits — 80 credits for honours and 40 for extra-departmental courses — divided in three years,“ said the registrar.

Sengupta said the system will give students a wide variety of subjects to choose from,for instance a student doing Honours or Major in Economics may choose credits from Bengali,or also from Physics.

The university has also kept a provision for transferring credits in cases when students opt to study a semester in foreign universities. The credits earned at these institutions would be added to credits earned at Presidency University.

“The system of credit transfer will help student-exchange between Presidency and other universities in India and abroad. We will have to sign an MOU with these universities so that the credits are acceptable to them and vice versa,” said the registrar. The university is yet to decide the names of these universities.

The syllabus for the first batch of students was finalised after a series of workshops and after consultations with experts. It was ratified by the University Council on June 18.

University teachers described the new system as “very student friendly” and said the syllabus has been rated well by experts.

“This is almost the same system in which I taught at University of Virgina,US,” said Aneek Chatterjee,professor of Presidency University,who taught at a US university recently as a Fullbright Nehru visiting professor.

Teachers also pointed out the new system will help good students to opt for basic sciences and humanities from which they shied away earlier.

University officials said the “mentor group”,which includes Professor Sugato Bose and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen,will provide valuable inputs to strengthen the new academic system.