FirstRanker.com

Category: General

Everything related to General category…

  • Evaluation unlikely to be a smooth affair for BIE

    HYDERABAD: In what appears to be a repeat of last year, the Intermediate marksheets may see bungling once again with the Board of Intermediate Education roping in 60,000 evaluators to check a whopping 1.1 crore answer scripts of the 19 lakh students who have appeared for the exam this year. The actual number required to deal with the answer-scripts is approximately 95,000 lecturers, as per BIE’s own calculation.

    Despite the shortfall, BIE has decided to begin the evaluation process on March 23, also appearing to ignore that the Intermediate valuation of 2010 was plagued with errors and had led to thousands of students applying for revaluation. Last year, 56,000 students had applied for revaluation and their results of 75 per cent students had changed significantly.

    While BIE officials claim that each of the examiners will be asked to evaluate approximately only 30 answer scripts per day, junior college lecturers say that the distribution of answer scripts to centres is done haphazardly with lecturers in some evaluation camps forced to go through 50 answer scripts over a period of six to seven hours, or even less.

    According to junior lecturers who have been assigned the job of evaluation, the shortage of evaluators will be more acute at several centres including Vizag, Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Chittoor where the number of scripts would be higher as well.

    Worse, representatives of the AP Government Junior Lecturers’ association said that while the number of shortlisted lecturers as evaluators is about 60,000 not even 80 per cent of them are expected to turn up for evaluation duty, which is a trend year after year. “Every year the BIE goes through a tough time regulating lecturers from corporate colleges who do not turn up for evaluation. Around this time of the year, the lecturers of these colleges would be busy with Eamcet, IIT and AIEEE coaching and hence, the management of the institutions do not let them attend evaluation camps,” said P Madhusudan Reddy, general secretary, Government Junior Lectures Association.

    According to him many private colleges have not even sent the list of eligible lecturers to the board. “The board should take stringent corrective measures to bring the situation under control,” said Madhusudan Reddy, adding that the possibility of evaluation errors this year as well is real.

    The lecturers stated that the board wanted to announce results within 25 days and this would put much pressure on the evaluators. The evaluation is supposed to be held from March 23 to April 15 and the results are supposed to be announced soon after the completion of tabulation.

    Government junior lecturers Association representatives said the shortage of evaluators is visible in evaluation camps for Sanskrit answer scripts, which began last week. About 8.1 lakh answer scripts are being evaluated by just 1,500 lecturers, they pointed out.

    Government lecturers also complained that there were instances in the past where the evaluation camps began later than the stipulated time of 10 am, leaving the examiners with just about three to four hours of evaluation time.

    BIE officials, however, maintained that they are sticking to the rule book. “The number of lecturers allotted to each of the districts is in proportion to the number of answer scripts which are to be evaluated. We have taken several measures to prevent evaluation errors,” said G Balaramaiah, secretary, BIE.

    Source : TOI

  • 500 Tamil Nadu engg colleges log off IT stream

    HYDERABAD: After almost a decade of bull run, the much sought-after IT stream is being dropped by several colleges for want of takers. With the number of students opting for IT in the past two years nose-diving, about 500 colleges from the state have decided to close down their IT classrooms for good. This would mean that just about 200 engineering colleges in the state will be offering IT education in the academic year 2011-12.

    “Students fear that they will not get jobs if they join IT courses and hence, many IT seats were lying vacant last year. AICTE should understand our situation and allow us to pay a lesser amount for closure,” said K V K Rao, representative of Engineering and Professional College Managements’ Association. According to managements, about new 25 engineering colleges which applied for permission from AICTE, have excluded IT from their curriculum.

    While the colleges, which sought permission for closure of IT courses from All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), had to pay Rs one lakh as closure fee, but managements say that they would incur more loss if the seats remain vacant throughout the year.

    Many managements are thinking of converting their IT seats into other streams including Electronic and Electrical Engineering (EEE), Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE). College managements said of the total 60,000 available IT seats in the state, only 30,000 students took admission in 2010.

    Meanwhile, subject experts of Jawaharlal Nehru and Osmania University told the managements not to get panic and wind up these courses. “IT education in the state took a hit in 2007-2008 as many passed-out students did not get jobs. But things have improved now as many companies are hiring again and there is no need to worry. If hundreds of colleges close down IT course, students who are genuinely interested in the course might lose out,” said V Uma Maheswar, placement officer, Osmania University.

    Apart from IT, MCA courses are also facing a mass closure. “In 2010, several MCA colleges had less than 10 students taking admissions. Twenty per cent of the MCA colleges, which faced this problem last year, want to close down this year,” said Rao.

    JNTU officials said some of the companies had offered Rs 4.5 lakh as remuneration this year for freshers who attended MCA campus placement interviews. “The colleges should wait for a year before winding up MCA course. In fact, there is much demand for MCA professionals outside the state,” said M Narasimha Raju, senior professor, JNTU-K. College managements, however, said that they will not go back on their decision to close down.

    Source : TOI

error: Content is protected !!