Visvesvaraya Technological University's mission helps engineering graduates land jobs

BANGALORE: Ashish Y graduated in electronics and communications engineering in June 2013. He applied for a job in five IT companies in the city but was selected for none. The reason: companies found him to lack in some technical skills that were never part of his academic syllabus. But in less than a year, Ashish acquired the skills and landed a job too, thanks to a free-training-cum-placement programme launched by Visvesvaraya Technological University.

Like Ashish, every year around 45,000 of 60,000 graduates passing out VTU affiliated colleges found it difficult to get a job. Many of them would approach consultancies or else end up working in a sector not related to their stream of engineering.

That's when VTU came up with a novel idea to address the problems of its distraught graduates. Mission VTU: Empower 10,000, launched in August 2013, saw 28,000 engineering graduates enroll for it in one year. And 35 of the 37 students who enrolled for the first batch have landed jobs.

Transgenders get space in DU’s PG admission forms

NEW DELHI: Delhi University has officially opened its doors to transgenders in postgraduate programmes this year and will extend the policy to undergraduate courses in the next academic year (2015-16) by introducing space for the third gender in its application forms.

Applicants from this community will be admitted under a separate category, varsity officials said. In postgraduate admissions, these students have been enrolled under a special category within the OBC quota.

"We had planned to start transgender admissions in undergraduate courses from this year but could not do so due to administrative reasons. From 2015-16 academic session, we will be introducing the third gender option in centralized admission forms and also make necessary policies for their admission," said DU registrar Alka Sharma.

Sharma said DU's transgender initiative was taken before it had received any direction on the matter from the University Grants Commission. In July, UGC had issued a notice asking varsities to include transgenders in various scholarship/fellowship schemes. "The applications forms for teachers' recruitment also has this category," she said.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists welcomed the move saying it was a step in the right direction. But they asked the DU administration, teachers and students to also sensitize the university community on transgender issues.

Anjali Gopalan of Naz Foundation (India) said DU's move would go a long way in integrating transgenders into the mainstream. "It a step in the right direction. It really empowers people and makes them feel they are part of mainstream life. But there has to be a sustained campaign to understand transgenders, their issues and sensitize the society," Gopalan said.

"DU has to involve the transgender community itself so that they are not made to feel like outsiders. Some mechanism has to be evolved for sensitization of the university community and also for the protection of the transgenders from harassment for which even the police needs to be involved," she added.

Around 90,000 candidates had applied for various postgraduate courses this year of which nine were from the transgender community. According to Delhi University officials, these students will be enrolled under the OBC category.

LGBT activists, however, expressed some concern about transgenders being enrolled under the OBC category in the applications.

LGBT activist and a PhD scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Gourab Ghosh, said, "It will not be fair for transgenders to transgress into OBC category as they are not OBC. A separate quota can be worked out else it would be injustice to both OBCs and transgenders."

Karnataka Public Service Commission exam: Kannada-medium professors evaluated English papers

BANGALORE: The selection of gazetted probationers in 2011 by the Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC) was full of anomalies and irregularities, a CID probe has found.

The probe has revealed that Kannada-medium professors evaluated answer scripts written in English; rural development and cooperation papers were evaluated by economics professors; and anthropology papers were assessed by sociology evaluators. This was done even though evaluators of respective subjects were available.

A copy of the CID report, submitted to the government on September 10, 2013 — available with TOI — reveals many more shocking irregularities. The answer scripts during the main exam were evaluated by professors and evaluators whose names were not in the list recommended by universities or other approving authorities. "Pliable evaluators were appointed, and in some cases retired personnel were deployed in furtherance of illegal designs," the report states.


Students writing the KPSC exam in 2012 (File photo)

The CID got the answer scripts evaluated by professors with eligible qualifications, and "...serious discrepancies were noticed between the marks given by experts and that by the KPSC evaluators," it said.

"Investigators also found that candidates had access to evaluators and had telephonic conversations with them seriously undermining the fairness of the system," the CID said. The report also pointed out that retotalling of marks on demand from candidates was done unfairly by KPSC to favour some candidates. Also, during retotalling enough evidence was found to show that alterations and overwriting was resorted to. Even before the completion of re-totalling, interviews were conducted and completed, it noted.