Eamcet answers raise a chuckle

​Hyderabad: Efforts of the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H) to keep up standards of the engineering education are yet to yield positive outcomes. Several evaluators going through the answer scripts are baffled with the kinds of answers the students are giving to questions in their examinations.

Explaining the woes of the evaluators, a senior professor from the Computer Sciences Engineering (CSE) said that the students from the CSE were asked to write about 'Array' in a recently held examination of the JNTU-H. The response of students turned out is the most shocking and yet hilarious.

The answer from one of the students was: 'Array' is related to how people call others with words like 'Arei", 'Ore', 'Eera' in the Telugu language. (Array is a type of data structure. It stores a fixed-size sequential collection of elements of the same type. It is used to store a collection of data).

These answers gave quite a laughing time for the evaluators. But, on a serious note, these are the answers of the students, who had qualified in the Telangana State Engineering, Agriculture and Medical Common Entrance Test (TS EAMCET) and entering the portals of the technical education.

Besides, coming across such a comedy show in numerous answer sheets, the one evaluator pointed out what is worrisome is that the students do not know even the basics, after studying the entire semester or a year. When we come across such answers in a good number of answer scripts from the same college then it was not only students but there is also something amiss in the case of those who are teaching them, he added.

For example, when the students were asked to distinguish between the concepts of 'Hardware' and 'Software', the answers turn out to be one of its kind classic example for the evaluators. The answer was 'Hardware is hard' and 'Software is soft,’ and 'software is made in India' and 'Hardware is made abroad" said another evaluator.

Taking the hilarious answers to the next level, some students, while answering a question on the 'Cascading Style Sheet'(CSS) said that ‘the sheets can be purchased from any stationery shop, underlining, there would be several kinds of style sheets sold.

That apart, some students give wings to their creativity in answering question filling the pages by writing filmy stories. This was to gain the sympathy of the evaluators in one way or the other and to get at least minimum pass marks, said another senior evaluator engaged in correcting answer sheets of the JNTU-H.

"This is the case with different colleges under the JNTU-H in which many of the students are studying under the fee reimbursement scheme. What is happening in the case of autonomous colleges is not known," he said. Adding to this, recently, the JNTU-H had withheld the results of a college suspecting mass copying took place in the examinations.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior official from the university said that what was written in one answer booklet is the same in several answer scripts of other students. And, even after a month of the university withholding results, the college did not approach the university to inquire the reasons for withholding declaration of results of their students. This reflects the sorry state of affairs of engineering education.

"It is against this backdrop that when the university has been putting in place stringent measure it is getting targeted for being unreasonable and strict, the official said.