Students at the Institute of Hotel Management (IHM) in Mumbai are being slapped with hefty fines by the college for failing to maintain minimum attendance. Such students with short attendance who wish to appear for the semester-end exams must pay the fine to avoid getting debarred.
The move has drawn ire of many students of the college who think the fine is unreasonably high, reported The Indian Express. A student must maintain 75% attendance in each semester else he/she can be debarred from the exams, according to the National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology (NCHMCT), the apex body for hotel management education.
In order to enforce the rule, the IHM has resorted to levying fines. The college has imposed fines of Rs 1,000 per percentage of the student’s attendance below the required 75 per cent. Going by this, students could be receiving fines anywhere between Rs 1000 and Rs 30,000.
Students having attendance between 45 per cent and 75 per cent have been slapped with the fine. Those with lower than 45 per cent attendance are not allowed to take the semester-end exam. Half of the students enrolled in the second and third years of the B.Sc. in Hospitality and Hotel Administration course are on the list of attendance defaulters, according to the college administration. A total of 411 students of third and fifth semesters have been named defaulters. Of these, 67 students have been debarred from exams.
The decision to allow students to appear for semester examinations after paying a fine was after consulting the students. However, according to students, the fine is too high and hence they have expressed their disapproval by protesting against it.
Nisheeth Srivastava, the institute’s principal, told Indian Express that the students were informed after the first defaulters’ list was prepared in September for the August attendance. In addition, the principal said, parents of the defaulters were sent emails after a new list was prepared in October and were advised to come for a meeting. The principal said the fines were kept hefty so that the students “feel the pinch when having to ask their parents for it”.
Keywords: Fine, Hotel Management, Students, Attendance, Defaulters
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