The Mumbai University will finally computerise all its manual examination application work from March 2013. In an order to principals, directors and administrators of all affiliated colleges and institutes, the university has said that applications for all final year courses will have to be done online through the university portal and instructions for the same would be issued by December.
In the past two years, MU has been moving towards transferring all its manual processes and reducing paperwork by computerising most departments. However, due to the huge student base the same has not been possible at one go. However, after successfully implementing the online admission process for the Institute of Distance and Open Learning (IDOL), the university has been encouraged to start the online process for examination application for traditional courses too. “The successful completion of the online admission process for IDOL wherein more than 70,000 students were admitted has made us confident of transferring part of the examination process to the online process too,” said Dr Naresh Chandra, pro-vice-chancellor, MU. With the student base in the final year of the Arts, Science and Commerce stream reaching 1.25 lakh, the university was hesitant about implementing the online application process.
University sources said that the same process had been implemented for engineering students last year but had faced some problems due to paucity of time. Dr Chandra said that the same would be taken care of as the University would be announcing the start of the process by the year end so that students had sufficient time to fill up the forms as well as rectify mistakes if any in their application forms.
He added, “We are carrying out the changes in a phased manner and hope to include more manual activities in the computerisation process from the next academic year.”
It could imply that students will not be required to visit the university personally for various administrative chores for which they have to visit different departments from time to time.