The Secret Of The Ignorant Mumbai University


There are 43 students in my third year Engineering batch who still have Applied Mathematics, Parts 3 & 4 of previous year to clear. If they don’t reattempt & pass before they enter forth & final year, they will be awarded the most undesirable thing in any student’s life: one year drop.

You can put the blame on students, that is all right. Lack of efforts is definitely the cause. But if we dig deeper into education politics, a disgusting secret pops out of the wormhole that is both appalling & callous of the perpetrators. One more cause that can cater to our demand for a proper explanation for the failure of so many students every year is the innocent diploma course. Out of the 43 hapless students I mentioned above, 35 are direct-second year students, which means they were directly admitted to the third semester of degree after having completed three/four years of diploma. These students last wrestled with the much-hated god of confusion, Mathematics in the forth semester (or second year) of their diploma. Let us suppose this to be the year 2011. At this point, the students who opted for HSC (Higher Secondary Certificate) after their SSC (Secondary School Certificate) have good knowledge of some important Mathematics topics namely Calculus, Laplace Transform, Fourier Series, Fourier Transform, etc. from their 2-year HSC course. Then this same year, these kids enter first year of Engineering degree course. They will study Mathematics (higher/heavier versions of what they did during HSC) and then move to second year. This is year 2012. Now, the kids who now have completed their diploma join the other kids in second year. The two differences they have are the diploma kids are one year elder and not at all accustomed to the Math topics their HSC peers are strong in. This is because the Maths that they had during their diploma times was trivial, covering topics like Matrices, Quadratic Equations, Trigonometry, etc.

As a result, if a diploma student chooses not to join an external tuition for Mathematics, thereby understanding not a single thing the teacher is teaching, he/she fails. If he/she takes little extra effort, then a 40 is not that difficult to achieve out of 100, but that depends on how a student is. There is where we stick the blame on them.

Coming to the secret, in 2010, a faculty group from the exam cell of a reputed college, tired of seeing their students losing one whole year because of failure in Mathematics, approached the great Mumbai University for a chat. Now they couldn’t directly approach the diploma course governors. So the group requested the innumerate board of the university members to have a word with the Maharashtra State Board Of Technical Education (MSBTE) about the subject, Mathematics. Their hypothesis was that if MSBTE tweaked the Maths in diploma curriculum to a higher level… a level in parallel with the Maths in the HSC course, then that would prepare the diploma students to tackle the strong Math basics of second year degree. This, as far as I am concerned, was an amazing solution.

The university board declined, citing and I quote, “We cannot go and request an inferior board to dance to the tune of something a nobody college has so amateurishly suggested. And for who? Drop-outs? Those shameless failures? Let them sit at home for a year & learn their lessons. After all, we do get what we desire; they still have to pay their fees to stay in line. We cannot change the whole goddamn curricula for a bunch of stupid students, for God’s sake!

The faculty group returned and conceived an idea. One professor of this group is a Math professor. He takes remedial lectures for such students. On Friday March 7th, 2014 he taught a chapter of Cauchy-Riemann equations to 20 out of the aforementioned 43 students. His name is Ashwin Chavhan. A professor with a change in his mind. This article is dedicated to his love for Math and dedication.

“A teacher should always lack negativity. Then, failure can take a back seat.”


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