Letter to director of my college

Respected Sir,

            The purpose of my letter is to express my view about the institution I am a part of.  I might be right or may be wrong but this is my opinion at this point of time. Further being a first year student having limited exposure to the institution the views are restricted to experiences in the first semester. I will talk mainly about two things: the syllabus and the paper pattern.

            First lets begin with the paper pattern. Consider the subject Chemistry. If you have a look at the first year paper pattern, we deal with basically a few problems and major part of the paper is theory. The theory involves questions like state the properties of lubricants or like state properties of polyethylene. Personally I feel there is no application in these type of theory questions. Even the problems involve a monotonous approach such as problems of the same type and nothing different. There seems to be no application of what we have learnt.

            Let us compare this with what I have heard from a few friends in different institutes such as IIT, Powai. Their chemistry paper involves no theory. It involves only problems. So it involves some logic. I see no logic in learning the properties of a plastic without even understanding them. One may understand them if one wants to but one even gets marks if one states them without understanding a single word of what they mean. I see no application in this.

            Our aim would be to improve as much as possible. I feel that it is necessary to have application of what we learn to a much greater extent.

Same applies to physics. Theory is practically the same but there is something to understand in physics as compared to chemistry. Secondly problems involve those of the same nature being asked repeatedly. There could be some variety and application of what you learn. After all ultimately we would have to apply what we learn. Life does not throw the same type of problems every time. I suggest paper patterns, syllabus and teaching at IIT’s be studied so that we can improve from that.

            Another question is that if UICT can get so much accomplished since it became autonomous why can’t we do the same. UICT if I am not mistaken has a tie up with MIT and with Purdue. There are about 15 seats for exchange students in the chemical engineering department. We do get students with higher marks in the entrance examination in a few of our branches ( at least two branches ) than students doing chemical engineering in UICT. Why the difference? If UICT can do it we should be able to do it. They might have an edge because of their specialization to branches related to one subject: chemistry. Further their syllabus is changed significantly as compared to what it was before it became autonomous. I do not imply that our syllabus also has to be changed. It may be changed only if there is a need. It is necessary that we find out whether there is a need and in what subject.

We might not even need to spend time and effort to form our syllabus. Why can’t we lift the syllabus the IIT’s have? This is only a suggestion and the practical problems of implementing this have to be considered.

Another issue is that why can’t we water the grass in the football ground or the cricket ground. I bring this issue up because when students play dust flies up from the parts where most of the grass is dead. When more than a few people play a large amount of dust rises in the air. It would be harmful to the lungs of those playing to breathe in so much dust. The ones with ailments like asthma will suffer even more. We could install proper water management devices. I think watering a lawn using water straight from a pipe cause significant wastage and excess watering. We could add adapters to the pipes, which reduce the water, flow and spread it out in all directions like a sprinkler. So the lawn can be watered by a person using minimum water. If I am not mistaken lawn can be watered every alternate day.

Another thing the students are discontented about is the lack of transparency in the evaluation system. We would like to know how exactly we are given the points (from 0 to 10) and on what basis. I think a lecture on how the system works is essential. Further it costs Rs. 500 for re-evaluation. Most students feel this amount is ridiculous. I feel Rs. 100 is an appropriate amount.

Further an ironic thing is that a friend had a grade of 4 in one subject. On re-evaluation it was increased to 8 which is a dramatic increase of 100%. I feel it is rather strange that such an incident occured and such discrepancies exist.

Thank you for listening to me. There are other things that come to my mind every day but these are the most significant things I can recall. My opinions are based on my first semester here. They may not be based on the larger picture as I have not been here long enough.

Yours faithfully,

~ by dhruvprotect on May 11, 2007.