New Indian Express reports on this. Following are some excerpts.
This is the second time in a month the Higher Education Department increased the student intake capacity of junior and degree colleges. Earlier on July 12, 822 seats were added in Plus Two Science and Commerce in six government colleges.
Gangadhar Meher (GM) Autonomous College, Sambalpur, will have 96 more seats in Plus Three Commerce in addition to the existing strength of 288. The students strength in Statistics in GM Junior College has been increased from 48 to 80. However, the Science seats in the Plus Two level has remained unchanged at 256.
In NC Autonomous College, Jajpur, Commerce seats in degree level have been increased to 128 from 96.
The State Government has approved the proposal of Ramadevi Women’s College here to open Biotechnology as a self financing course. The college will have 32 seats in B.Sc Biotechnology from the ensuing academic session. Earlier, permission was granted to Government College, Rourkela, to open 32 seats in B.Sc Computer Science in self-financing mode.
This time the Government approved 176 Science seats in four junior colleges. While SCS College, Puri, will have 48 more seats in addition to 304 now, Vikram Dev College, Jeypore, Government Women’s College, Sambalpur, and Fakir Mohan Junior College, Balsore, will have 32 more seats each.
The present capacity of Vikram Dev College and Government Women’s College, Sambalpur, in Plus Two Science is 128 each while FM Junior College has 256 seats.
Plus Two Commerce seats in SCS College has been increased by 32 seats taking the total strength to 160 while in FM Junior College additional 64 seats has been approved as against 128.
In Humanities, 32 more seats have been approved for Government Women’s College, Sambalpur, as against the existing capacity of 192 seats.
July 26th, 2007
Tathya.in has a biographical article on Prof. Gopal Nayak. Following are some excerpts.
Prof. Nayak is the product of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur was born at Berhampur in Ganjam district to a family of teachers.
An electrical engineer with a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from IIM Bangalore did his Ph. D from IIT, Kharagpur.
He has done his Ph. D under the guidance of Prof. Damodar Acharya who was the Vice Chancellor of BPUT, Chairman of AICTE and at present the Director of IIT, Kharagpur.
Prof. Nayak has spent a few years on Industry.
He has worked for Nelco in Mumbai in the product development area and for NTPC in the Procurement automation area.
Prof. Nayak has spent about 20 years in academics.
He is one of the founding Professors of Xavier Institute of Management (XIMB), Bhubaneswar.
As the Professor of Information Systems, he was instrumental in transforming XIMB into the most technology intensive campus in India.
XIMBans give credit to him in creating several firsts management education field: a campus network, providing PC to each student, making Internet accessible 24×7 and giving a technology orientation to the curriculum at XIMB.
He held important positions at XIMB such as the Dean (Academics), IT services and Admissions Co-ordinator.
Prof. Nayak’s most notable contribution is development of Academic Information System (AIS) and PAMIS.
The AIS is being used by many top business schools in the country such as XLRI Jamshedpur, IIM Indore, NITIE Mumbai.
PAMIS has been implemented in 314 blocks and 30 DRDAs in Orissa and is one of the most successful e-governance projects in Orissa.
With this background the Government of Orissa has roped in Prof. Nayak for the IIIT.
With a director of such background IIIT Bhubaneswar should also start offering degrees that relate to business and information systems such as MBA and MIS (Master in Information Systems). One may note that some of the IIITs, such as IIITM Gwalior, do offer such degrees.
July 26th, 2007
Pioneer reports on this teaming up to give training to selected children from several Tribal department run schools. Following are some excerpts.
The SC & ST Research and Training Institute (SCSTRTI) under the ST & SC Development Department has been organising a number of training programmes for the teachers as well as students of tribal schools to promote effective education among the tribals.
The institute, in collaboration with the Institute of Mathematics and Application (IMA) headed by eminent mathematician Professor Swadhin Pattnaik, identified 47 meritorious tribal students of Class VI from different Tribal Department-run schools and provided them an eight-day-long residential training course from July 17 to 24 to prepare them for the Mathematics Olympiad.
The training programme is considered to be unique and innovative, director of the institute, AB Ota, indicated that more and more such programmes would be held in future in the interest of tribal education.
July 26th, 2007
Hindu reports on a draft bill with 16 new central universities. Following are excerpts of that report.
The Union Human Resource Development Ministry is ready with a draft Bill for establishing 16 Central universities across the country.
The draft of the umbrella legislation that will govern all the new proposed Central universities — for the first time — has been sent to various Ministries for their comments. All Central universities so far have been established under different Acts.
As of now, there are only 22 Central universities in the country with Delhi having as many as four while 16 States have none. The proposed universities are believed to have been modelled as unitary, non-affiliating universities on the pattern of the Jawaharlal Nehru and Hyderabad universities.
The States identified for setting up these universities in the next five years at an estimated cost of Rs 5,000 crore in addition to the annual grants are Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Punjab. …
Dr. Singh’s initiative for improved university system came in June when he announced at least one Central university for each State and a degree college for every district following a meeting on higher education with Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh, and Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram
Comparing the above list with our list of 19 states which do not yet have central universities following are some observations: (i) Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Tripura are not in the above list perhaps because universities for them was earlier announced, (ii) Goa is replaced by Maharastra and (iii) Madhya Pradesh is in the list, although it is not clear if this is in addition to the tribal university that is to be head quartered in Madhya Pradesh. Five thousand crores for 16 universities means 312.5 crores for each university.
Hindu has another article in its website with much of the same content except the following additional point.
In the 350 districts, where the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) was below the national average, Dr. Singh had asked the Centre to assist the States through the University Grants Commission (UGC) in setting up degree colleges to improve the enrolment ratio.
July 26th, 2007