Hyderabad: The Ambedkar Students’ Association (ASA) of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) produced a seven-page study on the ‘discriminatory grading system’ in the institution’s PhD admissions.
The report, which has gone viral on social media states that there is a pattern in the grading of PhD applicants that mirrors the caste hierarchy.
“Ambedkar Students’ Association prepared and submitted a 7-page report on discriminatory marking of reserved category students in PhD interviews. The report establishes that there is a consistent pattern of discriminatory marking almost resembling the hierarchical caste order,” ASA HCU said in a tweet on Thursday.
“The report makes it abundantly clear that caste is alive and thriving in higher educational institutions. Structural discrimination and disadvantages are chipping away the gains of reservation from OBC, SC and ST students,” it added.
The ASA report states that despite having comparable admission exam scores, students from reserved categories are marked substantially lower than those from unreserved categories in interviews.
“We discovered a pattern of discriminatory marking in interviews in many departments across various schools in the university”, the report states.
The study provides PhD interview marks from the University of Hyderabad’s seven departments: computer science, plant science, biochemistry, physics, electronics, applied mathematics, and microbiology.
According to the report’s data, the average entrance exam score of the top five students in the computer science department for the Unreserved category is 41.4, and the interview mark is 24.6. Nevertheless, the average exam score among top OBC scorers is 40, and the average interview score is 17.2. The average admission exam score of the top five SC and ST students is 30.2 and 25.4, respectively, while the average interview score is 12 and 6.6.
According to the research, students’ grades have dropped in line with their caste privilege.
“The discriminatory marking in these departments almost resembles a structure of graded inequality where marks of students resemble their position in the caste hierarchy,” says ASA’s report.
The report also highlights eight severe cases of discriminatory grading, which include: Seven out of eight faculties giving a zero to an SC student who applied for a PhD in material engineering and an OBC candidate for a PhD in material engineering being given 2.4 marks in the PhD interview despite having a 40 entrance score.
Post making the report public, ASA’s list of demands include the formation of a committee to investigate the grading system, defining evaluation criteria, providing and recording individual grades from faculty members, holding Ph.D. admission seminars for students before admission begins, and ensuring that no student is rejected by the faculty by giving them zero points.
Faculty members in the past have marked students with zeroes and declared them unsuitable for admission, violating USC norms.
