President asks to establish norms for learning outcomes

NEW DELHI: Emphasising on maintaining quality and standards in fast expanding education sector, President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday sought establishment of norms and performance based system for learning outcomes.

He said with the proliferation of education, we must guard against the tendency to allow quality to take a backseat.

"We must establish norms and performance-based marks for learning process and outcome strictly and enforce them across the schools," he said while addressing the National Education Day function here.

The day is celebrated to mark the birth anniversary of India's first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

Remembering him as an "institutional builder", Mukherjee said he was the inspiration behind setting up of prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) which became a symbol of India's human resource development over the years.

The President said universal education coverage should be complemented by universal higher standards in education.

"Our education programmes must be driven by expansion, equity and side-by-side excellence," he said.

The country should also leverage on the advancement made by the technological institutions and narrow the gap between the "digital haves and haves not," he said.

He also reminded of the commitment made during the 8th Five Year Plan on increasing spending on education to 6 per cent of the GDP as against 3.3 per cent spent now. 

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1,010 scholars receive PhD degrees at Anna university

CHENNAI: The premier Indian Institutes of Technology have started taking the 2010 Anil Kakodkar committee's recommendation to lay emphasis on research seriously. State technical universities are slowly following suit with the premier institute.

Anna University, one of the biggest technical universities in the country with more than 500 affiliated colleges, gave away degrees to 1,010 PhD scholars today. In 2010 a mere 264 PhD scholars got their degrees from the university. After seeing a gradual increase from 1984, when only three PhDs were granted, to 2007 (162), the numbers have gone up steeply. Over the last five years the number has gone up by more than 282%.

"We have the highest number of PhD degrees awarded in a convocation by any technical university in India." said university vice-chancellor M Rajaram.

The maximum number of doctorates come from the information and communication engineering department (339), followed by the science and humanities departments at 252, and mechanical engineering 136. The electrical engineering department has produced 128 PhDs this year, while management science has 73 to its credit, civil engineering 41, technology 38 and architecture and planning three.

Director of the university's Centre for Research Usha Natesan said that there is no delay in reviewing the work submitted by the candidates. "Earlier it could even take 10 months. Now candidates can get their research paper reviewed in three months. This has also helped improve numbers to a large extent," she said.

The university continues to remain a teaching institution, as 1,41,726 UG and 42,140 PG graduates received their degrees at the 35th convocation on Wednesday. Academics said that there was a good mix of full time and part time research scholars on campuses. Many of them expect to take up jobs as teachers in the various engineering colleges across the state, while others hope to be able to contribute to meaningful research in centres of excellence or government departments across the country.

M Anandakrishnan, former vice-chancellor of Anna University and current director of the board of governors at IIT-Kanpur, said that the number may be high because the university has more than 500 colleges affiliated to it. However, he added that for the university to reach this number we can assume that there are a good number of professors who can take so many research scholars under their wing.

Comparing Anna University's research output to that of the IITs, professor Anandakrishnan said that all the IITs put together may reach and exceed this number. "The difference may be in the fact that most of the research scholars in the IITs are full-time committed researchers, compared to a good number of part-time scholars likely to graduate from here. This makes quite a lot of difference," he said.

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Nursery admission: HC restrains Delhi govt from issuing fresh guidelines

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Wednesday stopped the city government from issuing fresh notification for nursery admission for the upcoming academic year in the national capital on a plea challenging the last year's guidelines.

Justice Manmohan said the Delhi goverment's education department will not introduce any "fresh guidelines" till the judgement is pronounced.

"No fresh guidelines till the judgement is pronounced," the court said, adding that it would deliver the verdict soon.

The court was hearing a batch of petitions filed by the parents against guidelines issued by Delhi's Lieutenant Governor on December 18, 2013 on nursery admission.

The court, which reserved its order after hearing arguments from both the sides, also said that the petitions will become infructuous if the government issues fresh guidelines.

"All the exercise carried out till date will be futile," it said.

Under the earlier system, out of a total 100 points, 70 were given if the child lives in the neighbourhood of the school, additional 20 were given if a sibling is studying there, five points more if either parent is an alumni and another five points if it is an inter-state transfer case.

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Education not a challenge but an opportunity: Smriti Irani

Smriti Zubin Irani, Minister of Human Resource Development, said Wednesday that education is not a challenge, but an opportunity.

Irani was speaking at a session on "Which Comes First: Employment or Employability?" at the India Economic Summit organized by the World Economic Forum and the Confederation of Indian Industry in New Delhi on Wednesday.

She stated there is a need to rejuvenate the teaching profession and bring back the respect that this profession once enjoyed. She stated that the Prime Minister's initiative to reach out to students on Teachers Day was a step in that direction. It was hoped that this initiative would help encourage more young people to turn to the teaching profession as a career.

She further added that currently the Indian education system does not have a system of credit transfers between institutions. This was a major issue for students who have been forced to take a break in their education due to unforeseen circumstances. It is for this reason that the Government of India is now announcing a scheme for credit transfer on November 11. The scheme is expected to cover students from Class 9 – Post Graduation. Depending on the feedback received, it may also be extended to PhD courses as well.

The minister also announced that the government was encouraging Universities to set up placement cells so as to encourage dialogue between students and employers on the skills sets required. She mentioned that the Government was experimenting with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to reach out to a larger number of students in the country.

Addressing the session, Mr. Uday Kotak, Executive Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Kotak Mahindra Bank highlighted the need to bring back the respect and dignity to the teaching profession in India. He observed that previously, education policies focused on the creation of education hardware (school buildings etc.). He was of the view that there now needs to be an equal emphasis on the creation of education software (teachers, teaching tools / methods etc.).

Ms. Shobana Bhartia, Chairperson and Editorial Director, HT Media and Co-Chair of the India Economic Summit stated that there was a talent conundrum in the country with jobs without people and people without jobs. To address this issue there is a need to adopt disruptive innovation such as online teaching models. Highlighting the experience of the Bridge University which her company has set up, she stated that they had adopted a hybrid model where a large part of the teaching is done online and some part of it is classroom interaction.

Ms. Arundhuti Gupta, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Mentor Together India stated that career choices in India are left to chance. She was of the view that instead of finding people unsuitable for employment just as they are entering the workforce, there is a need to mentor them over the long term, preferably from adolescence onwards.

Prof. Nicholas Dirks, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley pointed out that the US and India share the same set of challenges in terms of its education system. He pointed out that the economic crisis of 2008 had led to a sharp squeeze on the funds available to educational institutions. This had led them to look at adopting public-private partnerships to raise the adequate finances for growth. He was of the view that the US had set up a successful University and college system and felt that India and the US could collaborate in this field.

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Rajasthan university vice chancellor quits

JAIPUR: Vice chancellor of Rajasthan University, Dev Swaroop, on Monday resigned from the post citing difficulties in functioning and 'non-cooperation' from the state government. 

The VC met Rajasthan governor Kalyan Singh on Saturday to apprise him about the situation and offered his resignation which was accepted by the Governor today. 

"The governor accepted the resignation today," a Raj Bhawan spokesperson said . 

"Jaipur divisional commissioner has been given additional charge of the vice chancellor of the university," he added. 

"I met the governor on Saturday to discuss with him some issues regarding the functioning of the varsity and non co-operation," the cice chancellor said. 

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Delhi University: DU re-exam: Parent to file PIL

NEW DELHI: Delhi University restoring re-evaluation will help the FYUP and future batches but not the 2014 graduates. Those who failed a paper in their sixth semester exams still stand to lose a year as the October 20 notification doesn't mention this lot at all. At least one parent is planning to go to court over this.

Parent Bela Shelat, whose son got an "essential repeat" in the sixth semester, had written to the university, the HRD ministry, even the Visitor about this in August. Her son, a political science student who was to graduate this year, stands to lose his seat at a law school because in DU's half-baked version of the semester system, a test on a particular paper is set only once a year and not every semester. This means students with ERs on their papers aren't allowed to re-sit a test in the next semester but only with their juniors, next year.

Shelat says she intends to file a PIL in court. "The notification, when you look at the specifics, doesn't help the fifth and sixth semester students at all," she says, "The first parts are on FYUP and future batches. And for the new guidelines, they've given themselves time as there is still some time to go before exams begin."

She had demanded that re-evaluation be restored as well as supplementary exams to be held immediately after results are declared. She wasn't the only one. The new DU Students' Union, left-leaning students' body All India Students' Association as well as the DU Teachers' Association stepped up agitation demanding that some of the evaluation reforms introduced before FYUP be reversed. Till now, the university has capitulated only on the re-evaluation front. Provisions of special chance and supplementary exams - scrapped when the semester system was introduced - are still not available to students.

When the semester system was introduced at the undergraduate level in 2010, the changed policy required a minimum of 40% in each paper-theory and internal assessment-and 40% overall for a degree. Shelat's son passed in the internal assessment and has a 40% total but failed the exam by two marks. He'd applied for rechecking - re-totaling of marks - but South Campus officials informed Shelat "verbally" there's no change.

"The new notification reaches out only to students of the three-year programme who will write their semester exams in November / December 2014 and students who were enrolled in FYUP and whose results were declared in May/ June 2014," argues Shelat, "It again completely ignores the need for re-evaluation of the students enrolled in the three-year program, particularly those who have received an ER in their 5th and 6th semester. It is they, who stand to lose one full year if their papers are not re-evaluated before the end of November 2014. Many of them, like my son, have found provisional admission in some of the best universities of the country.

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5 months on, meet held for new IITs

NEW DELHI: Five months after the NDA government announced new IITs in Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, the HRD ministry has convened a meeting of state government officials and existing IIT directors to fast track the new institutions.

Meanwhile, IITs and NITs are working together on a new software that will make possible common counseling.

Sources said while Andhra Pradesh has located a site in Tirupati and a site selection committee has approved it, other states have been a bit slow. Kerala has also finalized a site. In case of Chhattisgarh, final decision has to be made if the IIT will come up in New Raipur or some other site. Goa had found a site, but it was found smaller for an IIT. The state government has been asked by the ministry to look for a bigger site. The J&K government has asked district magistrate of Jammu to locate a site. An area of 100 acres is required for an IIT and the land needs to be free of all liabilities.

As for common counseling, the HRD ministry has to submit affidavit in the Delhi High Court on November 30. On August 1, the HC had directed the ministry to set up a technical committee for regular sittings/consultations to sort out the process of common counseling for NITs and IITs so that it can be implemented from 2015-16. HC had asked the HRD ministry and IITs to consider whether the reserved category seats in the IITs, if unfilled, can be transferred to the general category. The ministry was also asked to find out if there exists any provision for lateral entry into IITs in the second year.

HC had asked petitioner Rajeev Kumar to make suggestions on common counseling to the ministry. In a detailed note, Kumar has suggested that a Common Board for Admission to IIT and NITs be constituted and it should maintain a web-portal as a single interface with the candidates for admissions to IITs and NITs. Kumar has suggested that candidates who qualify in JEE (advanced) and are given ranks that make them eligible for admission in IITs must be automatically registered by the common board. 

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