From an NIT Rourkela faculty:
Our institute has become the first among all NITs to earn the trust of SBI to sanction study loan to our students by the NIT campus branch itself ( in stead of the branches located in their native places) without asking for any sort of security. This facility was earlier available only to reputed institutes like IIT and IIM under Scholar Plus Scheme.
The story behind how this was achieved:
This has become possible due to strong follow up and bargain made by our director insisting on exclusive new ATM counter in the campus, Internet banking facility to all students (now students need not stand in the queue to pay fees in cash/cheque either in institute or halls) and this study loan, otherwise we would have given permission to other banks to open their branches in the campus to break the monopoly of SBI since inception.
Tathya.in also reports on this.
(Thanks to Sandip babu for this information.)
July 18th, 2007
Fearing public anger the Orissa government has asked the committee that recommended a 4.5 lakh/year fees for private medical colleges to take a second look at that. Following are excerpts from Pioneer’s report on this.
Drawing flak from student bodies as well as the public, the State Government on Tuesday appealed to the Fee Structure Committee (FSC) to reconsider its decision on the hike of admission fees particularly in the medical stream.
A student has to pay at least Rs 4.5 lakh per annum as against last year’s Rs 2.2 lakh to get into a medical college. In this connection, Industry Minister Biswa Bhusan Harichandan called a high-level meeting of officials on Tuesday. Secretary, Industry also attended the meeting.
It may be noted that the FSC headed by a retired justice had stipulated the annual fee for the 4-year MBBS degree at Rs 4.5 lakh. Orissa has 750 MBBS seats.
The State Government is of the opinion that if it sticks to this fee structure recommended by the Committee, a public resentment would certainly sweep the entire State.
"It is the Government which will face the public anger," said a senior official on the condition of anonymity, adding that if required, the Government may ignore the recommendations of the Panel for the greater interest of the student community.
However, the Government has not yet decided whether it would appeal to the Committee about reconsidering the decision on the admission to the engineering and other streams like MBA.
July 18th, 2007
Pioneer reported on this. It says
Counselling for admission into MBBS and BDS programmes of KIIT University will take place as per the schedule of the Orissa JEE, according to a University release. The university is offering these two academic programmes from the current academic session after getting the nod of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Earlier, the Medical Council of India and the Dental Council of India had recommended the commencement of MBBS and BDS programmes at KIIT.
July 18th, 2007