Mumbai University Students Protest Exam Error With Online Petition

Hundreds of Mumbai University students banded together this week to demand the school address a testing error they say affected their scores on an April exam. People in the Bachelor of Management Studies program, which takes about three years to complete and includes annual tests, wanted credit for wrong questions and mishandled corrections, the Press Trust of India reported.

User Vikas Gharawala started a Change.org petition Tuesday titled simply "Mumbai University please help us." According to the petition, the April 20 operations research exam had errors on two questions, Q1(a) and Q2(b). Proctors distributed paper corrections for the questions during the last 30 minutes of the exam -- which students argue was too late for them to fix their answers.

"Students had asked their exam supervisors for extra time and the reply they received was 'No,' " the petition read. "Students were warned that if they ask again then they will not be able to give the exams further and will be escorted out of the examination hall."

The results from the exams came out recently. The "majority of the students have failed in this subject," the petition read, adding students who usually scored well on the test didn't this time and some will have to take retests as a result. "The students all over the city demand extra marks as it is a hindrance for many," the petition read.

About 330 people have signed the petition so far, but thousands were reportedly involved in the push. A representative of Mumbai University told PTI officials already had begun fixing the problem. "We have initiated corrective measures in this regard, and over 80 percent work in this direction has been done," they said.

Students in France launched a similar petition last month calling for authorities to cancel a question on their English final. The exam used a passage from Ian McEwan's "Atonement" and asked how a character was "coping" -- a word with which many French students were unfamiliar. Nearly 13,000 students signed a letter to the education ministry, demanding a fix.