Odisha HRD

CUO Koraput to offer Diploma in Public Health with the help of Public Health Foundation of India

Update: Following is from Samaja.

This is a good move. We need more locals in KBK with expertise in public health issues.

1 comment May 9th, 2010

SUIIT admission announcement: Ad in Dharitri

• Main Link: http://www.suniv.ac.in/suiit.pdf
• Prospectus: http://www.suniv.ac.in/SUIIT-Prospectus%2010.pdf
• Application form: http://www.suniv.ac.in/SUIIT-App.%20Form.pdf

2 comments May 3rd, 2010

Xavier University bill getting fine tuned; plans to offer undergraduate programs

Sources suggest that the Xavier University Bill is getting finalized and may be introduced in the Odisha assembly in the upcoming assembly session. There is plan that the proposed Xavier University (which will be established by the XIMB people) will have undergraduate programs including in Arts and Commerce.

This would be a Godsend. While Odisha now has top notch programs in Engineering (at IIT, NIT, VSSUT, CIPET), Science (NISER), Law (NLUO), Business (XIMB), Social Work (NISWASS), Public Health (AIPH, and soon IIPH) and Education (RIE), and soon will have a top notch program in fashion design (NIFT) and medicine (AIIMS-like Institute), it does not have top programs in Commerce and Arts. Thus the proposed Xavier University offering these programs will fill a huge lacuna. There are several reasons I believe that the Arts and Commerce programs at the proposed Xavier University will be top notch.

• They have track record in Odisha and India. Their XIMB is among the top ranked business schools in the country.
• The top ranked Arts and Commerce programs in the country include many other sister Jesuit institutions such as Loyola Colleges, St. Xavier’s colleges and St. Joseph’s colleges.
• Xavier University being a university will be able to modernize and revise its programs at will and thus will have advantage over other colleges that need to work with their universities. (Some of the top ranked colleges are now autonomous though.)
• Many of the other top ranked colleges are uni-disciplinary. Xavier University will be able to share faculty among multiple programs and thus able to create more multi-dimensional programs.

The proposed Xavier University offering top notch arts and commerce programs would help the other institutions to improve their arts and commerce programs and may even encourage other groups (such as KIIT and ITER) to establish good programs in Arts and commerce.

Thus the Odisha government should not delay and speed up the creation of Xavier University.

Following is from India Today’s 2009 list of top ranked Arts and Commerce programs in India.

May 2nd, 2010

Andhra’s recruiting of IITians as faculty for its 3 recent IIITs

In 2008 Andhra created 3 new IIITs in rural areas of the state. These three IIITs at Basar, Nuzvid and RK Valley are the components of the newly established Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies. Following are excerpts from a report in Times of India that talks about hiring of faculty for these IIITs.

The institutes are going through a crisis at present due to inadequate faculty and lack of infrastructure because of which the state government has decided to reduce the intake of students by half — from 6,000 per year to 3,000 — from the coming academic year.

… “About 140 post-graduates from the five Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore have come forward to teach the rural students even though they have lucrative offers on hand from the corporate sector and international institutes,” said R V Raja Kumar, vice chancellor of the Rajiv Gandhi University for Knowledge Technologies under which the three institutes function.

At least half of the selected post-graduates and PhDs are Andhrites and have expressed their willingness to stay among the students and impart engineering education in the country, the VC said. Raja Kumar himself is an IITian from Kharagpur. “The hunt for talent will continue. We want to recruit post-graduates from the institutes of national and international repute in the country,” the VC said.

.. “This is for the first time in India that campus recruitment is being done by a university for the recruitment of the faculty. The response has been very encouraging and several post-graduates have volunteered to join the institutes located in remote areas,” said Raja Kumar.

In Odisha KIIT has been recruiting heavily from IITs. We reported on it in https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/2492. I hope the Odisha government engineering colleges, IIIT Bhubaneswar, SUIIT and VSSUT follow a similar approach and go for campus recruitment in the IITs.

The program at these IIITs in Andhra are different from programs anywhere else. See http://www.rgukt.in/program.html. They offer 6 year dual degree programs after the 10th class and take students mainly from the rural areas.

May 2nd, 2010

Sambalpur University starts M.Tech in Food science & technology; ad for the other post graduate programs

Update:SUIIT now has a web page at http://suniv.ac.in/SUIIT.html. Thanks to kddf for the pointer.

1 comment April 30th, 2010

Center mulling possible changes in world-class/innovation/national university sites?

Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.

The Prime Minister’s Office is having second thoughts on letting 14 world class innovation universities come up in places selected during Arjun Singh’s tenure.

Sources said the system of first selecting the sites and then building the universities will not work in case of these institutions since the concept is different than a usual university. Besides, there has been a major change in the concept of innovation universities from the time of Singh. The HRD ministry in its latest concept note has suggested that apart from the government even private educational be allowed to set up these universities.

On the places selected during Arjun Singh’s tenure, an official said, “Innovation universities should come up in places that can attract students and world class faculty. Some of the sites selected earlier will not be able to live up to the expectations from a world class university.”

But the twist in the tale is that many of the states have already finalized the sites for these institutions and will definitely protest in case the Centre changes its stand now.  In many cases, states have shortlisted sites away from what HRD had finalised. This could become a problem.

… Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have selected sites in Sabarkantha and Sehore, respectively. But since these two places were not shortlisted by the HRD ministry, Gujarat has been asked to finalise a site near Ahmedabad or Gandhinagar and MP in an area near Bhopal.

I think, one may get a wrong interpretation of the above report until they read the last paragraph.  Also, Sehore is near Bhopal; it is only 38 kms from Bhopal. So something is missing; perhaps the reporter or his source did not do a proper fact-checking.

However, if the center indeed plans to change some of the sites that it had announced earlier, then the sites that may be in most danger may be the sites that are not near state capitals. But that itself will be very difficult after the series of announcements in the parliament and other venues.

• March 28 2008: http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=36955
• April 21, 2008: http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=37684
• Dec 16, 2008: http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=45702
• Feb 12, 2009: http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=47448
• July 21, 2009: http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=50715

See http://www.orissa2020.org/appendix/location-of-proposed-national-universities for the comparison of the sites that were initially picked. Finally, the center would not dare to take away one of these universities from one state and give it to another state.

2 comments April 29th, 2010

More Ravenshaw news: New Program on Hospitality; Construction of Barrier-free Campus starts

The first article is from Samaja and the second is from Dharitri.

It is good that Ravenshaw is introducing many new programs; I wish and hope that it would also strengthen the traditional programs.

April 28th, 2010

Current and planned schools and centers of CUO Koraput

The following is extracted from the latest CUO prospectus available at http://cuorissa.org/Central-University-of-Orissa-koraput-india/files/2032010KprospectusCUOdraft%5B1%5D.pdf.

The current schools and centers are:

1. School of Languages
   • Center for Odia language and literature
   • Center for English language and literature
2. School of Social Sciences
   • Center for Anthropological Studies
   • Center for Sociological Studies
   • Center for Media Studies

It proposes the following schools and centers.

1. School of Basic Sciences : (a) Mathematics
2. School of Health Sciences: (a) Nursing, Public Health and Community Health
3. School of Development Studies: (a) Economics
4. School of Biodiversity and Conservation
5. School of Education technology
6. Center for Indigenous Studies

April 27th, 2010

CUO Koraput entrance exam to be on May 22nd and 23rd 2010

From the prospectus cover:

The logo of Central University of Orissa symbolizes the pride of the Nation and stands for search of knowledge. The wheel inside the symbol signifies progress, prosperity and betterment of the human being and has been inscribed in the famous Sun Temple of Konark, Orissa. The textbook inside the symbol denotes the wisdom and source of knowledge. The flame crated in front of the textbook reflects a ray of hope, source of light to overcome ignorance and darkness through the enlightenment. This design represents the universal brotherhood, unity and integrity which is closely associated with the State of Orissa.

The last date for submitting application was April 19th 2010. This year it offers the following courses:

• MA in Odia
• MA in English
• MA in Anthropology
• MA in Sociology
• MA in Journalism and Mass Communication

Its prospectus available at http://cuorissa.org/Central-University-of-Orissa-koraput-india/files/2032010KprospectusCUOdraft%5B1%5D.pdf has a lot of materials regarding the plan of the university. We will write about them in a later posting.

On related news Central Universities of Kashmir, Jharkhand, Bihar, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are planning a common entrance test this year. The CU Tamil Nadu will be conducting the test. However, I could not find information about this in its web page. I guess their plan came too late for other central universities, such as CU Orissa, to participate in it.

April 26th, 2010

Admission notice for the Masters in Public Health program run by Ravenshaw University in collaboration with AIPH

April 26th, 2010

Center for Contemporary Music at Ravenshaw: From Dharitri

April 23rd, 2010

Ravenshaw to have a convention center named “Seven Pillar of Wisdom Center”: Dharitri

April 22nd, 2010

IIT act to be ammended to include medicine; Despite objections by the Health Ministry IIT Kharagpur to start medical school in collaboration with Indian Railways

Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.

In a written reply in Lok Sabha on Wednesday, minister of state for HRD D Purandeshwari said the ministry has decided to amend the IIT Act, the law that governs IITs, to include medical science. The health ministry had said that IITs should not be allowed to start conventional courses in medicine.

The amendment, Purandeshwari said, would help IITs to offer programmes bringing together the diverse disciplines of medicine and engineering. Referring to the health ministry’s objection, she said, "However, appreciating the fact that the modern trends in medical education and research in technology and medicine in all the developed and most of the developing countries are seen hand-in-hand, the government proposes to incorporate `medicine’ in the IIT Act."

Purandeswari said the programme would bring the two important disciplines of medicine and engineering together.

… IIT Kharagpur has come up with a concrete proposal in this regard and plans to start a medical college in collaboration with Indian Railways. At a meeting of experts in the health ministry in February this year, it was observed that IITs should start courses on health information technology, biomedical engineering and e-health rather than running a hospital or starting MBBS courses.

There are several lessons that Odisha can draw from this.

• As Purna Mishra suggested in a comment, VSSUT and the VSS Medical College in Burla should combine to form a single university.
• NIT Rourkela and IIT Bhubaneswar should consider adding a medical college as part of the institute; NIT could include the proposed ESI medical college and IIT could include the proposed Railways medical college.

April 22nd, 2010

XIMB to have a campus in Balangir; a second campus in the Bhubaneswar area near OEC

Update: For some time XIMB has been planning to expand in the Bhubaneswar area. See https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/1679. It is also interested in becoming a private university. See https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/2788. A recent Business Standard report says the following about the campus in the Bhubaneswar area:

XIMB which had kicked off its operations in the city in 1987, aimed to operationalize its second campus in the state by 2012, the year marking the silver jubilee …

… P T Joseph, director, XIMB said, “We will be coming up with two new campuses in the state- one at Bolangir and the other at Khurda. The Orissa government has already alloted us 35 acres of land at Khurda and has agreed to provide 25 acres of land on the outskirts of Bolangir town.”

The XIMB campus at Bolangir will exclusively focus on the Rural Management Programme and will have an intake of 120 students.

“Our campus at Bolangir will be a fully residential facility with a built-up area of 1.55 lakh sq ft and it will only offer the Post Graduate Diploma course in Rural Management. We will phase out the Rural Management programme at our existing campus in Bhubaneswar after the establishment of the Bolangir campus”, Joseph added.

XIMB’s campus will come up about seven km from Bolangir town and the institute wants to offer a rural ambience to the students pursuing the Post Graduate Diploma in Rural Management.

XIMB’s campus at Khurda is coming close to the campus of Orissa Engineering College.

It also seems to be making progress in the university front as tathya.in has a headline saying "XIMB University in offing".

See http://www.tathya.in/news/story.asp?sno=3962 for the news item on this in tathya.in. Following is from Samaja.

5 comments April 12th, 2010

Faculty positions available at SUIIT (Sambalpur University Institute of Information Technology)

SUIIT (Sambalpur University Institute of Information Technology), a constituent autonomous institute of Sambalpur University is established in the same line as IIITs to offer courses in IT related areas and to have world-class research institute in IT at Sambalpur. SUIIT will offer BTech(CSE), BTech(ECE), MSc(CS), MTech(CS) and MSc(Electronics) from this academic year (2010-11). The institute will also be taking up several research projects in the area of societal applications of IT. SUIIT is looking for faculty in area of Computer Science, Electronics, Mathematics, Physics. Persons having PhD degree from reputed institutions, good publications and interested in research career in IT are requested to apply for the position. The qualification, salary, selection process and facilities are similar to that of similar nationally reputed institutions of IT such as IIITs.

Interested persons are requested to send their cvs to SUIIT c/o VC’s Secretariat, Sambalpur University, Jyoti Vihar, Sambalpur, 768019. www.suniv.ac.in phone 0663-2430158

13 comments April 10th, 2010

Compiling the list of private state universities in India: work in progress

(Request to readers: If you know of private state universities not listed below and not in the UGC list mentioned below, please add a link in the comment. We will update this page.)

In this page we will collect information regarding private state universities in India. By private state universities we mean privately managed universities that are establish by an act in the assembly of various states of India. These are different from the deemed universities.

The list at UGC date June 2009 is at http://www.ugc.ac.in/notices/updatedpriuniver.pdf. We also listed them at https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/2782. My guess is that these private universities which have been created by state acts have UGC approval. We have come across many other private universities which have been created by state acts which are not in this list; some of them were created by state acts after June 2009.

We start with Odisha: Odisha has passed state acts for two private universities:

• Vedanta University
• Sri Sri University

Odisha has introduced an act for ICFAI university. It has been discussed and tabled in the assembly. As of writing this, It is yet to be passed by the Odisha assembly.

Chhatisgarh: The UGC list of June 2009 lists two private universities. (i) CV Raman in Bilaspur and (ii) MATS in Raipur

Gujarat: .The UGC list of June 2009 lists five private universities. (i) DAIICT Gandhinagar (ii) Ganpat, Mehsana (iii) Kadi Sarva, Gandhinagar (iv) Nirma, Ahmedabad (v) Pandit Deendayal Petroleum U, Gandhinagar

Himachal Pradesh: It passed an umbrella private university act in 2006. The UGC list of June 2009 lists two private universities. (i) Chitkara University, Solan (ii) Jaypee, Solan. Besides them following are some new ones.

• Indus International University, Una
  
• Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Science 2009, Bajhol, Solan
• Manav Bharti University, Solan, 2009
• Arni University, Kangra, 2009
• Eternal university, Baru Sahib, Sirmour

Jharkhand:

• ICFAI University

Karnataka: The UGC list of June 2009 does not have any university from Karnataka. However, since then the following has been passed.

• Ajim Premji University, act passed on March 12, 2010.

Madhya Pradesh: It passed an umbrella private university act in 2007.

• JP University of Engineering and Technology, Guna (Gazette Notification on April 29th 2010.)

Maharashtra: From a TOI report.

Maharashtra has also revived the plan to bring private universities into the state. Tope said that plans were afoot to help the corporate sector play a key role in the field of education. The Private University Act is being finalised in this connection, he pointed out.

Meghalaya: The UGC list of June 2009 lists two private universities. (i) Martin Luther Christian (ii) Techno Global.

Mizoram: The UGC list of June 2009 lists one private university. (i) ICFAI

Nagaland: The UGC list of June 2009 lists one private university. (i) Global Open

Punjab: The UGC list of June 2009 lists one private university. (i) Lovely Professional U.

Rajasthan: It has an umbrella private university act (enacted in 2005) to facilitate creation of private universities. There are 11 private state universities in Rajasthan in the UGC list of June 2009. (i) Bhagwant University,  Ajmer (ii)  Jagannath University, Jaipur (iii) Jaipur National University, Jaipur. (iv) Jyoti Vidyapeeth Women’s University, Jaipur. (v)  Mewar University, Chittorgarh. (vi)
NIMS University, Jaipur. (vii) Sir Padmapat Singhania University, Jhunjhunu. (viii) Singhania University, Jhunjunu. (ix) Suresh Gyan Vihar University, Jaipur.  (x) Jodhpur National University, Jodhpur  (xi) Amity University, Jaipur

Beyond those 11, some of the new ones not in that list are:

• Sridhar University, Pilani
• J K Lakshmipat University, Jaipur
• NIIT University, Neemrana, Alwar
• Jagdishprasad Jhabarmal Tibrewal University, Jhunjhunu

Sikkim: The UGC list of June 2009 lists two private universities.(i) Eastern Institute for Integrated Learning in Management University, Jorethang. (ii) Sikkim- Manipal University of Health, Medical & Technological Sciences, Gangtok.

Tripura: The UGC list of June 2009 lists one private university. (i) ICFAI

UP: The UGC list of June 2009 lists eight private universities.(i) Amity University, NOIDA (ii) Integral University, Lucknow. (iii) Jagadguru Rambhadracharya Handicapped University, Chitrakoot Dham. (iv) Mangalayatan University, Aligarh (v) Mohammad Ali Jauhar University, Rampur. (vi) Sharda University, Gautam Budh Nagar. (vii) Swami Vivekanand Subharti University, Meerut. (viii)
Teerthanker Mahaveer Univesity, Moradabad.

Uttarakhand: The UGC list of June 2009 lists six private universities.(i) Dev Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya, Haridwar. (ii) Doon University, Dehradoon. (iii) Himgiri Nabh Vishwavidyalaya, Dehradun. (iv) ICFAI Dehradun (v) University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun. (vi)  University of Patanjali, Haridwar.

West Bengal: The UGC list of June 2009does not have any from West Bengal. However, the following has been passed by West Bengal assembly since then.

• Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Kalyani

In regards to umbrella private university bills, as per http://www.academics-india.com/SC%20judgement.htm the Supreme court in

Prof. Yashpal & Anr. Vs. State of Chhattisgarh & Ors.
Coram: CJI ,G. P. Mathur , P.K. Balasubramanyan 11/ 02/ 2005
CASE NO.: Writ Petition (civil) 19 of 2004
PETITIONER: Prof. Yashpal & Anr.
RESPONDENT:State of Chhattisgarh & Ors.
DATE OF JUDGMENT: 11/02/2005
BENCH:CJI,G. P. Mathur & P.K. Balasubramanyan

has reiterated (see point 36) UGC rules that say:

3.1 Each private University shall be established by a separate State Act and shall conform to the relevant provisions of the UGC Act, 1956, as amended from time to time.

3.2 A private university shall be a unitary university having adequate facilities for teaching, research, examination and extension services.

The following table summarizes the private and deemed universities in various states of India. The data regarding deemed universities is from http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=50713. Since the HRD minister Mr. Sibal has said that the deemed university system will vanish, most of the private deemed universities will become private state universities.

12 comments April 10th, 2010