The Statesman

GANGTOK, July 20: There is good news for the students of Sikkim now for one doesn’t need to go outside the state for higher studies as the state is building its own world class university.

The Sikkim University, as it is called has already started its academic session by introducing some courses from this month and the varsity is changing the entire syllabus to foster the students with more capability.

“This will be a world class university as we have brought university experts from over the world to design the best syllabus,” claimed Mr Mahindra P Lama vice chancellor of the University. “The university will be interdisciplinary as any students can attend any other class beyond his subjects. For example, physics students can attend commerce classes and vice-versa and it will be called non-credit course” he added.

The academic processes will be divided into three different multidisciplinary learning courses including traditional, non-traditional and policy studies. “Traditional goes with regular streams like science, commerce and humanities; non-traditional is the studies of global warming, military science, air space etc and policy studies includes reports of Nathu La, glacier melting, policy analysis and many other current issues,” said Mr Lama. “This will not only give degree certificate but the students will have degree plus certificate after they pass out from the university” he added.
The university is inviting all the big colleges and universities from over the world including engineering, MBBS and management universities. There will be different study centres in the university like centre for globalisation studies, centre for neighbour studies and centre for international relation studies.

This will be the first university in the country to start semester system which means a student will have to face six exams in a year and students have to obtained above 80- percentage in exams while admission in the university.
“Initially, we are giving admission to those students who has obtained above 45 percentage in their higher sec
ondary level instead 33-percentage and later we will raise the percentage rate to strengthen the students,” said Mr Lama.
“The evaluation system will be fully computerised so that no student can manipulate the teacher or examiner and the main idea behind such stricture is to boost our students more who can face any challenge in their life even after studies are over,” he added.

When asked about the fee structure of the, Mr Lama said: “We have subsidised fee rates for the poor students and 20 percent of the fees collected from the rich students will be diverted to the poor students so that they too can study in the university.

“We also have a flexible donation system so that any big multinational company can come forward to donate money for the university or they can even build anything for the university like a basketball court or playground,” he added.
The upcoming university has already bought 312 acres of land at Yang-yang in South district about 70 km from Gangtok and the university will have all the facilities inside the campus. The university will have their own hospitals, shopping complex, radio station, media centre, theatre hall inside the campus so that students don’t need to go out of the campus for anything.

Once it gets completed it would not only serve the students from neighbouring places like Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Siliguri and Doors, but will cater to the needs of students from all the neighbouring countries Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan.