Chennai: Its now the fifth month since students enrolled for Madras University's distance education programme took their exams, but they are yet to hear from the administration about the announcement of their results.

As far as the University's explanation on the matter goes, high enrollment and a shortage of evaluators are the main reasons for it.

Talking on the issue, one of the university official said "Usually we have about 60-70,000 scripts (for MBA students alone). This year, we have one lakh scripts…But the number of teachers willing to do evaluation has fallen from over 150 to just about 50 or 60 this year. Earlier, we were paying only Rs. 9 per paper. But we have revised the fee to Rs. 12 with retrospective effect from April 2007".

But the students seem to feel otherwise, one student said "They rarely pick up the helpline number. They keep saying it will come in 20 days and then when we ask again after 25 days, they say they have not even begun the evaluation yet".

It is believed that the key reason for such issues, confronting many colleges in the country is the fact that many of them have now  become deemed universities or autonomous institutions, thereby increasing the work pressure on the faculties and staff.