Students at the arts faculty of Chittagong University (CU) have been facing additional session jam of around two to four years.

Such session jams are depriving the students of the opportunities to appear in Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) and other competitive examinations as they grow older after they complete their studies. As a result, they cannot qualify for such exams.

There are more than 3,000 students at the faculty that comprises the departments of Bengali, English, communication and journalism, philosophy, Islamic history and culture, history, Arabic, oriental language (Pali and Sanskrit), fine arts and Islamic studies.

Session jam has gripped most of the departments, including English, Bengali, fine arts and communication and journalism, compelling the students to pass out two to four years after their scheduled academic session.

The suffering has aggravated for the students of 1999-2000 sessions of English department as they are yet to complete their honours course. As a result, they could not appear in the BCS examinations.

The frustrated students of the batch are yet to sit for the honours examination while students of the same batch of other departments have already got their exam results and started the master's classes, sources said.

The students blamed insufficient number of teachers, politics, delay in publishing results and teachers' undue overseas stay on long leave for the situation.

Fourteen teachers, out of 18, are teaching at our department which is not enough for giving timely and proper education to the students, they said.

"We don't know when we will be able to appear in the honours examination that will certify us to enter the job market," said a student.

The students of 1998-99 session of fine arts will appear in their master's examinations this April, which was scheduled for 2003.

"We don't know the cause of the delay and when we would get rid of the curse,” said a student.

Students of the Bengali department also echoed the

same sentiment.

On February 12, they ransacked 13 classrooms and offices when their scheduled examination was postponed for the third time.

"Individual interest and ideological differences among the teachers are responsible for the prevailing crisis that ruins the most valuable time of our life," said the student.

Their classes were scheduled to end in October last year while the first date of the examination was scheduled for November 19, which were later shifted twice on January 22 and on February 18 this year.

The examination committee has been constituted twice due to conflicts among the teachers and non-cooperation by other members, sources said.

On the other hand, master's students of the communication and journalism department of 1998-99 session do not know when their student life will end as they are already facing an additional three-year session jam.

Another batch of master's of 1999-2000 sessions at the same department who completed their graduation in December last year was scheduled to appear in the examination in 2003.

Prof Tapan Jyoti Barua, chairman of English Department, said supplementary examination is the main cause behind the session jam.

"As we are to deal with a large number of students amid teacher crisis, it is difficult for us to continue teaching and examination-related work at the same time," he said.

"It's quite impossible for us to address the problem until the system of appearing more than once in the supplementary examination is withdrawn. We are to do huge exam-related work when a student appears once and our duties get two or threefold if the same student appears at the same exam again," Prof Tapan added.

Abdur Razzak Khan, chairman of Communication and Journalism Department, said delay in submission of answer scripts by the teachers is one of the reasons behind the postponement of publishing results that led to session jam.

"The academic committee of the department is trying to address the existing session jam of the department considering the interest of the students," he said.