Education Notes

Maharashtra Verdict reserved On August 4, a bench of the Bombay high court reserved its verdict on a PIL (public interest litigation) writ challenging the percentile system which seeks to ‘normalise’ marks scored by students writing the school leaving exams of differing examination boards. After hearing the case of the parent of a CISCE board affiliated school student who complained that the system is biased in favour of state board (SSC) students, the court declined to stay the admission process into intermediate college (class XI) revised by the Maharashtra state government, as the process is complete in most colleges/higher secondaries. But the court specified that the whole process would be subject to the judgement. According to the state government’s counsel, there are class XI vacancies in several colleges in Mumbai. At the state level there are 97,239 vacancies, while in the city there are around 1,900 vacancies, he said. Nevertheless after a query from the bench he conceded that most of the “eminent” colleges in the city had no vacancies. Following this, the court asked the government to furnish a list of “colleges preferred by the students”, and also aggregate figures of intake capacity and students admitted into class XI statewide, before delivering its judgement.  Delhi Call for 735 new varsities To increase the percentage of students in the age group 18-24 in higher education from the current 10 percent to 15 percent during the Eleventh Plan period (2007-12), a UGC committee has suggested the promotion of an additional 735 universities in the country. The committee, comprising Prof. Duraisami of Madras University and Prof. Sudhansu Bhusan of the National University of Education Planning and Administration, Delhi, said that the additional universities will be needed to increase gross enrollment ratio (GER) to 15 percent. Constituted to suggest reform of the affiliation system and monitoring of education in the Eleventh Plan, the committee has calculated 20,000 students per university to achieve this GER. “We will study the report and make a final suggestion to state governments for starting the new varsities,” UGC chairman Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat told the media. The committee’s report assumes significance in view of the National Knowledge Commission stating that 1,500 universities are needed to trans-form India into a knowledge society.  Faculty crunch in IITs IITs across the country will need 3,000 teachers in the next ten years to manage teaching and research activities, a top IIT official disclosed on August 4. The institutes have prepared a blueprint on possible teachers’ shortage after the Union government changed the criteria for sanctioning faculty posts in these elite institutes. “In ten years time, the 13 IITs will need 3,000 teachers. At present, 10-20 percent of sanctioned posts are vacant in these institutes,” says IIT-Delhi director Surendra Prasad. The IITs usually recruit faculty from research institutes within the country and abroad. “There is a proposal that we may have to launch a global hunt for getting faculty members for the institutes,” adds Prasad. The Union HRD ministry recently reduced the number of…