What's the way forward?

What's the way forward?


UGC regulation making NET qualification mandatory for teaching posts leaves thousands of M.Phil candidates in a quandary.

The recent observation of the Madras and Delhi High Courts on the National Eligibility Test (NET) is clear. A pass in NET or State-Level Eligibility Test (SLET), as mandated by the University Grants Commission, is necessary for appointment as assistant professor (lecturer) for teaching in colleges or universities.
To upgrade and standardise teaching in colleges, UGC introduced NET as a basic qualification. The latest development is a cause for motivation for candidates appearing for NET on December 26. Universities and colleges had, so far, exercised the relaxations the UGC provided in recent years in appointing candidates with M.Phil qualifications. They now have to strictly confine their appointments to candidates with a pass in NET or SLET or a Ph.D. as per UGC's new norms.
Such a scenario would be a blow to the thousands of M.Phil degree holders in self-financing arts and science colleges. They are in a quandary since there is no way they could hereafter bank on their qualification or service record to join teaching careers in government colleges and universities.
"In fact, M.Phil degree holders after a regulation in 2006 were discouraged from taking NET as they already had the qualifications," says a professor, C.R. Ravi. Now, the HC judgments mandating NET/SLET has shocked thousands of lecturers who plan to move the Supreme Court. The issue now is whether the there would be enough NET and SLET-qualified candidates for the thousands of vacancies that would keep arising, given the ever-increasing numbers of universities and colleges.
This calls for efforts on the part of higher educational institutions to facilitate serving teachers to clear NET. However, the reality is that the self-financing colleges where they work in would rather prefer them to remain in a state of perpetual dependence. Estimates show that there are just 12,500 NET and 15,000 SET certificate holders in the country. In Tamil Nadu alone, an estimated 45,000 candidates with M. Phil qualification are serving as teachers in the several hundreds of self-financing arts and science colleges as also government-aided colleges that offer programmes on a self-financing basis.
Sailapathy, an academic, says the contradictions in the policies of UGC and the AICTE in making teacher appointments are causing enormous discomfiture to postgraduates in subjects such as mathematics, physics and chemistry.
On the one hand, the AICTE permits candidates with B.E. or B.Tech. to handle these subjects, and on the other, the UGC forbids postgraduates in these subjects with additional qualifications of M.Phil from serving in arts and science colleges. A clear directive from the MHRD, he believes, would enable the M.Phil and Ph.D. qualified candidates in these subjects to pursue teaching careers in engineering colleges.
According to S. Hariharan, Director of the UGC-Academic Staff College in Puducherry, NET does not take into account the fact that capacities and awareness levels of those from smaller centres may vary largely due to their educational backgrounds.
In order to help such candidates cope up with the standards of the NET, a mechanism should be developed to include training for such examinations from the graduate level. Also, there is lack of awareness about the exam itself among the large sections of the population, he said.
"During training, I see students who cannot grasp the very idea of this examination though most of them are bright enough to become good teachers," he says. Dean of the School of Social Sciences at the Pondicherry University, D. Sambandhan, says that in the name of selecting "a creamy, intellectual class among the candidates," common examinations such as NET deny opportunities to a large number of students to be part of the mainstream.Prof. Sailapathy advocates a system of equalisation between the ranking for seniority in acquiring higher qualifications and the merit based on marks given for performance in qualifying examinations like NET and SET for the purpose of appointments in colleges and universities.

R. KRISHNAMOORTHY & SRUTHISAGAR YAMUNAN


Research plus pedagogy
FIROZ ROZINDAR
The Indian Institute of Science is setting up a synchrotron centre and an Intensive Talent Development Centre in Chitradurga.

The Indian Institute Science (IISc.) is in the process of undertaking a two-pronged initiative in its core areas: strengthen advanced scientific research, as well as promote scientific talent among teachers and students. And the activities will be focussed in Chitradurga district where it is making arrangements to set up its branch.
The IISc's huge stride in research and technology (R&D) will be in the form of setting up a synchrotron centre which will come up on around 100 acres of land in Challakere taluk. In a parallel move, it is setting up an Intensive Talent Development Centre with financial aid from the Karnataka Government. The Government has granted Rs.2 crore for the centre and handed over 32 used government buildings for the purpose.
B.N. Raghunandan, senior scientist at IISc., who is spearheading the talent project, told The Hindu that the institute intends to offer special training to science teachers of high schools in the State. This is to help teachers, as well as students, know about the advancements taking place in the field of science and technology across the globe. For this purpose, the institute has decided to set up a full-fledged campus.

Dr. Raghunandan, who is also chairman of the Campus Development Committee, said that though the IISc. had been conducting such training programmes for 35 years in various districts, it had decided to set up a permanent campus in Chitradurga. The first batch of training is likely to begin in January or February. IISc. has paid Rs. 39 lakh as the first instalment to Deputy Commissioner Amlan Aditya Biswas for renovating the buildings.
The IISc. branch will undertake research work in the core sectors such as renewable energy, space science, aerospace, water resource technology, ecology and environment. This is expected to provide job opportunities for research students of various departments. According to an IISc. source, in the initial stages, the institute needs at least 150 scientists and nearly 1,000 research faculty.
Synchrotron
Synchrotron is electron-accelerator to produce high-intensity light to study the structure of the atoms in matter. It is a powerful tool that enables scientists and engineers to probe the fundamental nature of matter. "If I can put it in simple terms, a synchrotron is a device that produces light more than a million times brighter than sunlight," said Chitradurga MP and alumnus of IISc., Janardhana Swamy. The emerging beams are extremely fine, and are emitted in extremely short pulses, typically 10-100 picoseconds in length (a picosecond is a trillionth of a second). Mr. Swamy said that in the absence of a sophisticated synchrotron, Indian scientists were depending on Western countries that have such centres. "It is not possible for our scientists to conduct intense research or testing in our country since we don't have such ultra-modern facilities."
He said the synchrotron facility at Chitradurga will be accessible for general scientific and academic purposes.
"A national facility means we don't have to rely on limited access to overseas facilities. We'll have a greater capacity to develop our own projects and provide local industry with dedicated, cutting-edge technology.
And we'll give our own top scientists a better reason for staying in India, while attracting top researchers from overseas." The facility will help research the field of medical imaging equipment, aid drug discovery and research, develop therapies to treat cancer, and help to study the changes in living cells.
The powerful penetrating characteristics of synchrotron light also allow researchers to probe below the surface of electronic devices or to check the integrity of metal joining processes such as welding. The centre can be built beneath or above the ground. Synchrotron facilities in Paris and the U.K. are above the ground, while a circular tunnel that also has protons and electrons clashing at speeds of light lie deep beneath the ground in Geneva covering an area of 27 km.
"The facility at Chitradurga will have some similarities with the one in Geneva.
The latter deals with high-energy physics while the Chitradurga synchrotron will look at materials science, biology and the like. It will be in the range of 2.5-6 Giga electron volts," said M. Vijayan, senior scientist at IISc., who is also the co-chairman of a national expert committee constituted to implement the project.


MAST: a test for employability
LAVANYA M.
Shortage of ready management talent and the high cost involved in expanding talent search is a major challenge most industries encounter. Making students employable, identifying their skills and aptitude before they set foot into the industry, will go a long way in cutting the cost spent by the industries.
With this objective the All India Management Association (AIMA) has introduced a national-level entrance test called the Management Aptitude and Skills Test (MAST). The test facilitates individuals and organisations realise the employees' optimum potential.
Candidates who are studying final-year of MBA, PGDM or those who have an equivalent degree or diploma are eligible to appear for this exam.
AIMA conducted a study among employers, recruiting firms and business students through Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB), and MAST was conceived and designed based on their feedback. "Every year, India's more than 2,000 management institutes put about 3 lakh graduates in the job market. MAST will allow them to tap talent from the entire country and not just a few famous business schools," says Rekha Sethi, director general, AIMA. This will enable the industries to spot talent that may be present in B-schools that do not have the conventional brand name, she says.
MAST is an objective-type test with multiple choice answers. Total duration of the computer-based test is 150 minutes. The test will have three sections: psychometric assessment, general aptitude and domain knowledge. It has been designed to evaluate crucial aspects of a candidate's ability like critical thinking, competence in the chosen discipline, cross-functional competence, technological competence, communication skills, key personality traits and cultural awareness.
The assessment of candidates will be in the form of percentile scores for general ability and domain knowledge. The result for the psychometric test will be in the form of a descriptive profile. The database of the test result can be accessed by member recruiters without any cost.
MAST will be conducted twice a year and for the first time in February, 2011. Interested candidates can register for the test online in the website: http://www.aima-ind.org/

Source : The Hindu, Dec 21,2010