New delhi, January 16: If you are looking for an education loan, public sector banks (PSBs) may be your best bet. In a report to the finance ministry, the Indian Banks Association has said that education loan disbursal by the stateowned banks in the first half of this financial year has increased by Rs 4,200 crore, an increase of 15%. More than 95,000 accounts have been opened during this period.
Chandigarh, January 15: Member of Canadian Parliament Ujjal Dosanjh today proposed to the Punjab government tie-ups with the education ministry of the British Columbia province in Canada.
At a meeting with Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, Dosanjh said a joint delegation of Punjabi and Canadian teachers could be sent to enable teachers here to upgrade their skills.
–Agencies
London, January 15: India needs $400 billion of investment in education over the next decade because it views the sector to be as important as economic growth in moving the country forward, Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal has told British ministers and university vice chancellors.
Sibal has outlined India’s massive plans in education in meetings with three cabinet ministers and 16 vice chancellors in London. He has further meetings today with the heads of schools, who will brief him on taking education to the disadvantaged.
Male, Jan 15 (IANS) It was a breathtaking experience for the 950 eclipse chasers onboard Aquamarine, India’s first eclipse cruise, as the moon covered the sun’s disc making a ‘Ring of Fire’ in the sky – the millennium’s longest annular solar eclipse Friday.
The island nation of Maldives provided the best view of the celestial event.
People from the age group 4 to 70 held solar goggles to their eyes or had their cameras pointed skyward on the Sun deck of the cruise ship since 9.30 a.m. to get a clear view of the event.
Bhubaneswar, January 15: The Orissa government today issued a directive asking elementary and secondary schools in the state to sing the national anthem during morning assembly.
The state’s patriotic song ‘Bande Utkal Janani’ would be sung every Saturday after prayer, School and Mass Education minister Pratap Jena said while issuing the directive.
‘Sarve Sham No Janani’, ‘Vande Mataram’ and ‘Sare Jahan se Achha’ would also be sung in schools after prayer during morning assembly, he said.
The directive also asked the teachers to be present during the session.
Chennai, January 15: Thousands of people today watched a rare celestial event at the southern tip of the country — Kanyakumari and Dhanushkodi near Rameshwaram — where the noon turned into dusk for a while as the moon partially covered the sun creating a ring of fire.
Scientific community from various parts of the country converged at the two places to study the longest solar eclipse, that occurred after 110 years, of the millennium.
London, January 15: UK wants to “push forward” its relationship with India in the education sector, and British universities are increasingly interested in coming to the country to collaborate like “never before”, minister for human resource development Kapil Sibal has said.
After an extensive visit to the University of Surrey and the Imperial College of London, Sibal, on a visit here, told newsmen, “In both institutions, we felt these institutions are ready to collaborate with us.”
New Delhi, January 15: Teachers of Central universities are livid with the University Grants Commission (UGC) over a proposed regulation on their service conditions.
The regulation on Career Advancement Scheme (CAS), if approved by the Commission, would deflect teachers’ attention from their primary responsibility of teaching, the Federation of Central University Teachers’ Association (FEDCUTA) claimed here on Thursday.
New Delhi, January 14: What should be the weight of the school bag of tiny-tots who often stoop down more under the load of books than under the pressure of study?
Here is a formula that the Kendriya Vidyalya Sangthan (KVS) has come up with.
In a circular to all its principals, the KVS has laid down weight norms for the bags to be carried by children to school.
As per the norms, the bag for children in Class-I and II should not be more than two kg, while it should be less than 3 kg for students of Class-III and IV.
New Delhi, January 14: A proposal to establish three national universities on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model on Wakf land will give Muslims and other minorities an edge in educational development, Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said.
Welcoming the approval given by the Human Resource Development Ministry for the establishment of these universities, Khurshid, who is also Chairman of the Central Wakf Council (CWC) said, “By this we are hopeful that we would be able to give benefit to the minorities.”
Kathmandu, January 14: The deported Nepalese student Neetu Singh wants the Maharashtra government to clear her of the charge of anti-India activity and said she is yet to make up her mind on the state government’s offer to allow her to return.
Taking exception to the Maharashtra government’s decision to link her return to putting restrictions on her movement, Singh a student of the Pune based Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) said “by imposing restrictions on my movements, do they want to give an impression that I am involved in anti-India activity”?
Melbourne, January 14: Australia is tracking foreign students coming to study amid reports that the number of Indians applying for visas has fallen due to the attacks.
The Australian government will “track the number of students coming to this country, including Indian students”, said Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
The number of Indians applying for visas to study in Australia has fallen by almost half, heightening fears for the country’s $17 billion international education industry.
New Delhi, January 14: Aspiring teachers might have to study twice as long as the duration of the BEd (Bachelor of Education) and DEd (Diploma in Education) programmes will be doubled.
The change will be made in the new curriculum framework, which the National Council of Teacher Training (NCTE) will bring out in February. However, it will take at least four years for all instititutions to adopt the new formula.
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.