II PU: Sociology paper surprisingly tough for students

Mangaluru: When it comes to the arts stream in PU colleges across the state, majority of students typically struggle with English, economics, political science, or psychology. However, this time they had trouble with sociology, a subject where arts colleges previously achieved cent per cent results.
Across the state, numerous students underperformed in this subject. According to teachers, the challenging multiple choice questions (MCQ) and the relatively stringent question paper, compared to previous examinations, could be the contributing factors. The toughest subject was political science. The colleges, be it govt, aided, or unaided, blame that because of these two subjects, the overall pass percentage in the arts stream was affected this year. They also blamed that those who prepared question papers did not follow the blueprint of the question paper.
"This was not expected from The Karnataka State Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB). Earlier, students had difficulty clearing English, political science, economics, and psychology papers, but not sociology. There should be some leniency while setting question papers for arts subjects. We have seen six of our students failing in this subject. The results took us by surprise," remarked a college principal of an unaided college, which has a large number of arts students. "We are now making a detailed study on how it happened and what went wrong," the principal said.
Another principal of a govt PU college, who has been teaching sociology for the past 32 years, shared that this is the first time there was such a poor result in the subject. "All our batches so far had 100% results, but this time 10 students failed. Those who set the question paper did not follow the blueprint, and the first question in the exam itself was very confusing. This kind of tough question paper is not expected for arts students," he complained, adding that even the political science subject saw a lot of failures. "This resulted in a drop in arts results not just in Dakshina Kannada, but across the state," he said.
Sindhu B Rupesh, director, department of pre-university education, Bengaluru, said she was aware that a lot of arts students failed in this exam compared to the previous one.