Hundreds of students of Gurgaon’s Ansal University in Sector 55 held a protest on February 28 over a host of issues, including collection of unjustified fees, lack of regular faculty, lack of proper lab equipment and poor placement.
A few frustrated students also burnt their mark sheets, saying they could not get placements.
The students claimed that the university has been charging them Rs 10,000 annually for sports — even when there were no sports facilities on the campus!
“We have to get our own stuff if we want to play. Why are they charging us then? Unbelievably, the ground is often rented out for corporate events,” complained Happy Dalal, a first-year student.
There are more grievous allegations as well.
When a student is not able to secure the passing marks, he/she gets a carryover or back. The student needs to give that specific exam again to secure passing marks. The university has been, it seems, charging students for carryover papers in their internal exams.
Deepika Arora, another first-year student, said, “If we are unable to clear the internal papers, we should be allowed to write it again. But if we don’t pay, we are not permitted to appear in the semester examination. This is ridiculous!”
The administration has been unfair on other counts too. “If we are late by even two minutes, they mark us absent for the whole day,” said another student.
“There’s no regular faculty — the lecturers keep changing, even mid-session. Our syllabus is, thus, never completed on time. Everything is adding to our bad performance,” explained a final-year engineering student, Hemant Kumar.
Amit Nagar, another final-year student, added, “A development fee of Rs 60,000 is being charged from each student. What development! Our labs don’t have any equipment. We somehow manage on our own.”
The placement scenario is bad as well. “Parents take huge amounts of loan for our education — but we have no campus placement. The university seems least interested in getting us placed,” lamented Yogendra Pal, a graduate student.
The university, on the other hand, refuted all the allegations and called protesting students "non-performers who have not been able to clear their examinations".
“It is really unfortunate that such a protest happened. A handful of graduate students created so much ruckus for no reason at all. We are ready to work with our students to resolve the issues, if any. We are open to discussions with them — but they must be willing to cooperate,” said Dr Sona Vikas, university spokesperson.
