Education and Career

New Delhi, January 14: Though private engineering colleges account for 75% of engineering graduates in the country, their teaching standards leave much to be desired, as can be gauged from the fact that an estimated 30% of fresh graduates are unemployed even a year after graduation.

These are the findings of a report by IIT-Bombay professors Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak P Muley. Completed in 2007, it has now been published as a book titled ‘Engineering Education in India’, which was released recently by Union human resources and development minister Kapil Sibal.

Bangalore, January 14: Over 200 meritorious candidates selected for the post of lecturers at government polytechnic colleges were upset as they were not allowed to attend counselling on the grounds that their names did not figure in the first list.

The directorate of technical education conducted the counselling on Wednesday.”We are following the list sent by the higher education secretary.

Some names have been withheld because the records submitted by candidates have not reached him,” said HU Talwar, director of technical education.

New Delhi, January 14: The government is working on a proposal to set up three central universities in the public private partnership mode specifically for educationally backward Muslims.

The ministry of minority affairs, which is spearheading the proposal, has suggested that these universities be developed on wakf land. The plan has the in principle approval of the ministry of human resource development and ministry of finance, and is being currently vetted by the law ministry.

These universities will be modeled on the BR Ambedkar University and the Indira Gandhi Tribal university.

Washington, January 13: The thought that life could exist in universes outside our own is all in a day’s work for Alejandro Jenkins, postdoctoral associate in theoretical high-energy physics at the Florida State University (FSU).

His thoughts on the hypothetical ‘multiverse’ — a mega-universe full of smaller universes, including our own — are now receiving global attention, thanks to a study he conducted with another colleague.

Jenkins and co-writer Gilad Perez, theorist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, discuss a provocative hypothesis known as the anthropic principle.

Washington, January 13: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will chair the fourth meeting of the Global Colloquium of University Presidents, a network of international university presidents and vice-chancellors, including India’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jan 14-15.

The meeting of the colloquium committed to addressing global public policy problems through research and teaching, will take place on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, according to a university announcement.

New Delhi, January 13: As part of the ongoing exercise to clean up higher education, HRD minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday said the ministry was planning to create a national database of academic qualifications in electronic format which would authenticate and reissue certificates.

The ministry is planning to bring a bill for creation of a depository which would store certificates issued by school boards and universities in an electronic format for any future use.

Chennai, January 13: Nothing can be more valuable than a collection of examination question papers from the past — this belief seems to be entrenched in the minds of students preparing for their board examinations. With hardly two months left for the public examinations, accessing such papers easily tops the ‘to-do’ lists of students.

Raipur, January 12: College and university teachers in Chhattisgarh will be paid UGC-prescribed salaries, the Government told the Assembly today.

The new pay-scale will be paid with retrospective effect from January 1, 2006, Chief Minister Raman Singh said in the House.

The arrears, amounting to Rs 234 crore, will be paid in two instalments, he said.

–Agencies

New Delhi, January 12: Starting 2011, students across India will be able to get their educational certificates at the click of a mouse, a radical move that will help curb forgery of certificates.

Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal Tuesday announced that students of schools, technical colleges and universities will be able to get their certificates through a centralized online pool — for a fee.

All school boards, technical colleges and universities will deposit their educational degrees in a centralised online “depository”, he told a news conference here.

Kanpur, January 12: The 38 students of IIT Kanpur who were denied admission into fresh semester this year for “bad academic record” have been asked to vacate their hostels by the institute.

The 24 undergraduate and 14 post-graduate students have been asked to vacate their hostels, IIT Kanpur Director Sanjay Govind Dhande said.

Dhande told reporters here that said that the 38 students either failed in their exams or were not allowed to appear in them due to different reasons.

Bangalore, January 12: Youth should prefer Public sector organisations to serve the country than look at lucrative private jobs as they were satisfying and secured, Mr Rakesh Mohan, former RBI Deputy Governor and a policymaker, said today.

Speaking to UNI he said he had spent most contented 15 years in the public sector and this was where he developed professionalism.

It offers a challenging and fulfilling career and the country’s young professionals must join such services rather than solely focusing on lucrative jobs.

Mumbai, January 12: Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), has decided not to consider CAT scores for admissions to its flagship programme, PGDM (C), this year. However, it is still mandatory for aspirants to have appeared at CAT or GMAT to apply for the MICA course.

This had become necessary as CAT-2009, which is being held online for the first time, is yet to be completed. CAT-2009 results, which were to be announced on January 22, are now likely to be declared in the third week of February 2010.

Bangalore, January 12: The state department of collegiate education plans to introduce a centralised system of admission to under-graduate programmes in the state.

Bangalore and Shimoga districts will implement the new system as a pilot project for admission to courses leading to a bachelor’s degree in the Arts, Commerce, Science, computer applications or business administration in academic year 2010-11. A system of centralised admission for the Master’s programme at Bangalore University came into effect this year.

Bhagalpur, January 12: Students in large number today locked a state-run engineering college here to protest against the alleged paucity of teachers, official sources said.

The students forced the employees and authorities to move out of the campus and locked the main gate of the college.

They later held a demonstration in front of the institute and shouted slogans against the authorities, they said.
–Agencies

New Delhi, January 12: Human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal has grand plans to reform our education system.

After advocating a formula that would test the analytical ability of students instead of promoting learning by rote, Sibal wants educational institutes to be free from university affiliations. At present, institutes with degree courses need to be affiliated to state universities.

New Delhi: In a move that is likely to boost quality in education and training, certain courses of Indira Gandhi National Open University will be recognised by UNESCO.

The university and the UNESCO on Monday signed an Agreement of Cooperation for identifying special programmes for co-branding.

—Agencies

New Delhi, January 11: In view of the intense cold wave condition, the Delhi Government today ordered closure of pre-primary, primary and middle class schools in the city for five days beginning tomorrow. “Due to extreme cold conditions, Government has decided to close down pre-primary, primary and middle class (upto class-VIII) schools for five days,” Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely said.

New Delhi, January 11: HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today said there is a need for having a separate body to conduct university examinations, a step that will give relief to the higher education institutions so that they can concentrate on research.

“Today the universities in the country have a huge number of affiliated colleges. They conduct examinations and make money. The conduct of the examination puts a huge burden and as a result they fail to concentrate on actual things they are supposed to do,” he said at a function to release a book on “Engineering Education in India”.

New Delhi, January 09: The government today assured the NRIs it would remove regulatory constraints to encourage their participation in the education sector as skill development was necessary to achieve 10 per cent economic growth in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17).

“It is quite logical to enable NRIs to play part in expansion of education and to improve quality of skill development. There are regulatory constraints, which may come in the way…we are working to relax them,” Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas here.

New Delhi, January 08: DOTE (Directorate of Technical Education, Tamilnadu) will announce the polytechnic results 2009 on January 9, 2010. The Polytechnic results 2009 will be available after 00.00 hrs.

DOTE will publish the results for Polytechnic October 2009 examination 2009.

Students can view the results at www.schools9.com. At this moment, the website is showing that the results will be declared around 00.00 hrs on January 9, 2010.

Samaylive.com wishes Best of Luck to all the students.

New Delhi, January 08: Union Public Services Commission is going to conduct the exam of Civil Services Prelims on May 23rd this year.

UPSC has earlier this week issued the notification about the exam in Employment News. The civil services (preliminary) examination opens the gates for aspirants to become top bureaucrats, diplomats and police officers in India.

Imphal, January 08: The four-month shutdown of educational institutions in Manipur was called off Friday following a meeting between Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh and the protesting groups.

Schools and colleges would resume classes from Saturday.

All educational institutions in Manipur have been closed since Sep 9 with the Apunba Lup, an apex civil society group representing more than 20 different organisations, demanding the resignation of the chief minister over the alleged extra judicial killing of a youth in July.

Chennai, January 08: The University of Madras has chalked out a programme that will offer free distance higher education to Sri Lankan Tamil refugees living in Indian and Sri Lankan camps from the next academic year.

“Our syndicate meeting has decided to offer free distance education to Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who are residing in Indian and as well in Sri Lankan camps” Madras University Vice-Chancellor G Thiruvasagam told PTI.

The university has invited on January 18 Deputy High Commissioner for Sri Lanka in South India V Krishnamoorthy to discuss various aspects of the programme.

New Delhi, January 08: The human resource development ministry on Thursday announced a set of reforms in the technical education sector to meet the growing needs of engineering and management seats in the country.

The government relaxed All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) norms and allowed new engineering and management institutions to admit more students.

New Delhi, January 08: In a bid to end corruption in giving approval to institutes, the AICTE has decided to shift to online registration process and relax land requirements for new institutes.

The AICTE will also issue unique identification number (ID) to faculty members of the AICTE-approved institutions, a mechanism that will help check the trend of certain faculties working in multiple institutions.

The bio-metric impression of each faculty member will be taken to track his movement.