Kathmandu: Something unheard of and unsensible transpired in the bachelor’s level humanities third year tourism development examination conducted by Tribhuvan University on Monday.
Students of BA third year reached the examination hall on time that day. The bell rang and the question paper was distributed. When they read the questions, they were shocked, appalled and disgusted!
What was meant to be the examination of tourism development turned out to be a complete disaster as the question sheet had no questions about Nepali tourism.
The question paper had nine questions–three long and six short–none of them about Nepal’s tourism. After reading the question one is left wondering whether it’s an exam on Indian history or tourism development.
The students were left dumbfounded, shocked and disgusted after receiving the paper. The paper had nothing about travel and tourism, the questions were all about Indian history. Even though the questions were changed after an hour, the fact that such an incident took place is shocking.
This is not the first time the TU, Nepal’s oldest university, has given faulty question papers to the students. The examination committee of the university has made several serious errors–grammatical and syntactical–while making questions. Either exactly the same copy of the question of the previous year is given or, if the new question papers are prepared, they are full of punctuation and capitalization errors, even factual inaccuracies.
The egregious errors with the question paper on Travel and Tourism Development has earned fair share of backlash on social media against the workings of the TU, while also raising serious questions on TU’s capability, sincerity, morality and sense of judgment.
Students who were given the question paper say they were shocked, appalled and disgusted to see the questions which were all about Indian history.
Students who were given the question paper say they were shocked, appalled and disgusted to see the questions which were all about Indian history.
“First I thought, are they kidding? Then I was appalled, shocked and disgusted. How can they make such a blunder with a question paper?,” said Aditya Neupane, a third year student at Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus, who sat for the exam on Monday. “This is an unpardonable error. I hope the TU authority will take action against the person who committed such a mistake.”
“This is pathetic. They teach travel and tourism for a year and give questions which are not related to the subject at all,” said another student. “This is the reason why no one wants to study in TU affiliated campuses.”
Education experts say that such a mistake will seriously jeopardize the reputation of TU. “This incident is going to seriously hamper the reputation of TU on national and international platforms,” said Narendra Prasad Shiwakoti, General Secretary of Nepal University Teachers’ Association (NUTA). “It will negatively affect the drive and motivation of the students in their education.”
According to Shiwakoti, the incident will affect the education of Nepal as a whole. “Students will see no reason to study in any university in Nepal. The trend of going to study abroad will further rise.” He said that serious action must be taken against those who committed such a shameful error.
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