300 students of GNDU face uncertain future over placements

Nearly 300 students, who recently graduated from the GNDU, are are staring at an uncertain future as several companies that offered them jobs are finding it difficult to evolve a criteria for hiring in the absence of “comprehensive evidence” of their academic performance.

The Guru Nanak Dev University in an official release here on Sunday said the students are facing a peculiar situation regarding their job offers due to non-availability of detailed marks cards of their intermediate semesters as they were promoted last year on the basis of cumulative average of their grades of previous semesters.

This was done according to directions of the government following the COVID-19 pandemic, the university said.

A GNDU official said some of the companies offering jobs are finding it difficult to evolve a criteria to hire prospective employees in the “absence of concrete and comprehensive evidence” of their academic performance in the form of detailed marks cards of all the semesters.

Reservations have also been expressed over the conduct of non-proctored e-mail based examinations, the official further said.

Students and their hirers did not take very kindly to examinations which were held by sending question papers to students and receiving the answer sheets through e-mail, the official further said.

It has also been observed that there is a noticeable discrepancy in performance of students in comparison to their record of previous semesters. In many instances, it has resulted in good students securing less marks, said the official.

The GNDU is in contact with the companies and is trying to sort out these issues so that the students having placements do not face any problem in joining their jobs, the official said.

An overwhelming majority of students have given their choice for offline examinations. The university has conveyed this to the Punjab government and sought directions in this matter.

The GNDU will conduct examinations as per the guidelines and directions of the state government, the official added.