Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The education woes

Gurkirpal Singh Sidhu writes some woes on higher education in Haryana and Punjab state. It may not be surprise but it is noteworthy to observe few paragraphs.

  • the number of seats offered by 456 colleges in Haryana and 176 in Punjab far exceeded the number of students qualifying for admission to these colleges. In Haryana, against 53,000 seats, only 41,104 students appeared for the test, while 31,000 students appeared for counselling. Office-bearers of the Association of Educational Colleges (self-financing) observed that “self-financing BEd colleges are running into losses as many seats are vacant”. 
  • ….in Punjab where around 12,000 students qualified against around 21,000 seats. When the matter came up before the court, it observed that “the total number of seats available in these institutions is so large that even when the last candidate who appeared in the common entrance test (CET) for admission is admitted to the course, thousands of seats have remained unfilled”. Thus, the problem arose entirely due to setting up of a large number of institutions in this regio”. 
  • AICTE rolled back its norms fixed for nursing colleges. This led to the Indian Nursing Council, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, relaxing the norms for running nursing colleges. Land requirement for running the institute has been reduced. The retiring age of faculty members has been raised to 70 years. What justification can ageing faculty provide for bringing in new ideas with his/her knowledge acquired about four decades back” 
  • Technical education is in dire straits, as is reflected from the fact that around 16,000 students out of 23,000, spread across semesters of 66 engineering colleges of Punjab Technical University, failed in their mathematics examination”.

No comments: