Colleges split on curbing mobile phone use

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Trichy: Should students be prohibited from using mobile phones on college campuses? The ubiquitous communication device and its smart phone version continue to evoke conflicting opinions from college administrations to this day. While some colleges feel that banning it would be counterproductive, others offer multiple excuses to keep it away from students.

Colleges which are for use of mobile phones feel a ban would considerably curb the freedom of the students. They also point out that in this digital era, smartphones help students in multiple ways. On the other hand, a few institutions feel it is their responsibility to make sure students stay away from smartphones “for the safety of women college-goers”. They also argue that reading and listening have taken a backseat among students who are glued to electronic devices most of the time.

During a parent-teacher meet at St Joseph’s College on Saturday, principal F Andrew announced that smartphones would be prohibited on the campus during college hours. The announcement understandably evoked a warm response from many parents present there. The principal later went on to explain how a smartphone could spoil college-goers.

Andrew said most students had stopped visiting the college library ever since smartphones became prevalent. “Also, the students have stopped taking notes as they only click photos of what is being written on the black board,” Andrew told TOI.

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Jetstar to run Trichy-Singapore flight from October
 

If things go according to plan, passengers will soon be able to fly from Trichy to Singapore on Jetstar as the airline is mulling a service between the two destinations, taking into account Trichy international airport’s potential. Jetstar officials who flew into Trichy on Friday discussed the plan with stakeholders and carried out a study on the Trichy market’s potential for Singapore and beyond. Airport sources said that they have a plan to start their service between the sectors in winter schedule.

Thiruvalluvar varsity stares at recruitment scandal

Shanmughasundaram.J@timesgroup.com

Vellore: Several poorly-qualified people were appointed as teaching and non-teaching staff in Thiruvalluvar University and its constituent colleges in recent years.

The appointments were not in accordance with the rules and regulations of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the university per se, said highly placed sources in the university.

Some have submitted bogus certificates and joined in various departments in the university.

Though the officials are well aware about the anomalies, no action has been taken against them as “their needs are taken care of,” said the source.

For instance, one of the associate professors in Zoology department submitted bogus experience certificate at the time of joining in 2010. The university, while crosschecking the facts, found the malpractice. However, no action was initiated.

Registrar (in-charge) V Peruvazhuthi told TOI that the university had been looking into the records of appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff.

“There are allegations of ineligible candidates getting appointed in the university. We are checking the records and verifying their authenticity. Action will be taken based on the outcome of the verification process,” said the registrar, who is also the dean of college development council. He also holds additional charge of finance officer, research coordinator and physical education director.

Directorate of Local Audit Fund (DLAF) had raised objections in the audit reports of the university for not producing the service registers (SR) of 20 teaching staff, including 10 assistant professors appointed in 2012 and 2013, in the university. The audit report said the appointment files were not produced before the DLFA to authenticate the correctness of the appointments.

Emirates, IndiGo planes get too close for comfort 

TIMES OF INDIA

Saurabh.Sinha@timesgroup.com

New Delhi: An aircraft of IndiGo and Emirates breached the minimum distance that has to be kept between airborne planes, in yet another scare of this kind in the Indian skies. The latest ‘airprox’ happened on January 28, 2018, in Nagpur airspace when IndiGo A-320 flying as 6E 334 (possibly Hyderabad to Raipur) and the Emirates Boeing 777 was on its way from Singapore to Dubai. The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is probing this scare in the skies.

Modern aircraft have airborne collision avoidance systems (ACAS) equipment that issue two types of advisories to pilots: traffic advisories (TAs) and resolution advisories (RAs). In the first step, a TA is issued to give an advance warning to crew of two planes that they are headed in the same direction. In the second stage, RA is issued which asks crew to take evasive action to avoid mid-air collisions. In this case, RA was issued.

Confirming this, an IndiGo spokesman said: “IndiGo aircraft did receive a TCAS (traffic collision avoidance systems) RA and the other aircraft involved was an Emirates B-777. The matter was reported to the regulator (DGCA) and AAIB as per protocol. Indi-Go flight crew have followed their standard operating procedures, further we are awaiting for more details from the DGCA office or AAIB”

Given the serious nature of this incident, a team of AAIB officials headed by its senior officer Jitender Loura is probing the same.

For the full report, log on to www.timesofindia.com

How corrupt VCs keep cash-for-job machinery rolling in TN universities 

TIMES OF INDIA
 
Vice-Chancellors Who Bribe Their Way Into Varsities Recover Cash From Professors

Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com

The cash-for-appointments in Tamil Nadu universities is hardly a new trend. The arrest of Bharathiar University’s vice-chancellor A Ganapathy by state vigilance sleuths merely indicates how institutes of excellence have been practising it so blatantly that the VC himself was caught red-handed. None of the state’s 13 universities has not faced such allegations in the past.

In February 2016, the then registrar-in-charge of the Thiruvalluvar University in Vellore allegedly issued a letter selecting a waitlisted candidate as principal of a constituent college in Thirupathur, despite the syndicate resolving otherwise. Sources in the directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption (DVAC), said the registrar relented only after the selected candidate was admitted to the hospital after a shock. “A forgery case was registered against the registrar on January 17,” the source said. Tamil Nadu University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (TANUVAS) is also mired in a similar controversy, and the state animal husbandry department had to issue an advisory against last-minute appointments by an outgoing vice-chancellor.

Observers say university corruption is a machinery greased well over the past decade. One of the first moves of a newly appointed vice-chancellor is to call for professor appointments to get a return on the investment that he/she has made to get the coveted post. Candidates pay anywhere up to ₹30 lakh for a post. According to DVAC, Ganapathy was arrested for allegedly taking money to confirm the post of an under-probation lecturer.

“A former Anna University VC, soon after his appointment, called all 500 affiliated colleges and collected ₹10 lakh each,” says M Anandakrishnan, a former VC of the University. No surprise then, that at least two Anna University former VCs have been embroiled in corruption cases.

Junior professors, who enter the system by paying hefty bribes, recover the amount from funds meant for developing infrastructure, academics or sports of their institutions. As they rise in seniority, they abuse their power as syndicate members.

The rot starts at the top when dubious candidates get into VC search committees, says Gopalji Malviya, a former professor of University of Madras. “Some people with laughable credentials have occupied the VC seat,” he says.

The new trend is money-bag educationists running colleges ‘sponsoring’ candidates for a quid pro quo when the latter become VCs, say observers. A top government official says the reforms have kicked in now. “There is now a law on who can be on the search panel, which now has a time frame to shortlist candidates. The panels are now headed by retired judges and eminent educationists among others”.


Experts like Anandakrishnan appreciate this and say the current crop of VCs appointed over the past six months is largely clean. But nothing can be done about the rotten apples that the system had inducted in the past 15 years, the official says, except “keeping a close watch on them”.

Chromepet govt hosp doctors juggle patients and postmortems

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai: Doctors with only MBBS degrees at the Chromepet government hospital, the lone state facility in a 21-kilometre radius that has high accident-prone stretches, are struggling to switch between treating patients and performing postmortems. Barely five minutes from the hospital, aprivate medical college has a team of forensic specialists who see more mannequins than bodies.

Doctors at the hospital say the facility, on an average, does at least three postmortems a day, and around 1,200 a yearequivalent to those performed by tertiary care hospitals like the Stanley government medical college hospital and the Royapettah government hospital.

“While the other two have an exclusive forensic medicine team to do the postmortem, we have to take care of both, attending patients and postmortems,” said a doctor, who did not wish to be named.

The secondary care hospital receives accident cases from GST Road, Chennai bypass, Rajiv Gandhi Salai and also from the East Coast Road. In addition, they also get a lot of cases of injuries sustained at construction sites in the fast developing suburbs around.

Although postmortems on a routine day don’t get delayed, doctors say some of the bodies are referred to Royapettah or Madras Medical College on the days when there are accidents in multiple locations in the vicinity.

Director of Medical and Rural Health Services Dr M R Enbasekaran, however, said treatment at the hospital has not taken a backseat with doctors being engaged in postmortem or vice versa. “Specialists are available only in our tertiary care hospitals. In all our secondary care hospitals, MBBS doctors available at that hour do the postmortem. And treatment is not compromised at any point,” he said.

According to the government, autopsy is done in 257 district and taluk hospitals in addition to government medical college hospitals. Officials say autopsies take up to two hours and results are usually given within 48 hours.

“At Chromepet hospital, we try to give it within 24 hours,” said the hospital’s chief medical officer. “We avoid delaying work as our workload could increase suddenly if there are multiple accidents.”

Dekal V, head of the department of forensic medicine at Saveetha Medical College and hospital, said the state could ease the load on government doctors if they rope in private medical colleges to do postmortem. “At least in high accident-prone zones they could form a consortium with private hospitals, many of which have forensic specialists,” he said.

Off-campus colleges face heat from AICTE 
 
They Have To Register On Own: Deemed Varsities Told

Pushpa.Narayan@timesgroup.com

Chennai: Off-campus units of deemed universities, 1.5km or farther from the institution’s main campus, are staring at trouble, with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) mandating that they register separately to engineering courses under a new set of new guidelines the council issued last week.

On January 26, the council released 10 guidelines based on its Approval Process Handbook 2018-19 and a November 2017 Supreme Court order, which said all deemed universities should apply as new institutes for approval of all courses in engineering and technology, pharmacy, architecture, applied arts and crafts, management and MCA.

“Universities running their programs or courses from multiple locations... in the same city or different cities should apply separately for all their campuses (multiple locations) AICTE approval,” it said.

This has triggered debate among administrators, educationalists and policymakers, as some universities run more than one unit that the Union HRD ministry has not notified as an off-campus facility.

The apex court order said allinstitutions offering technical education would function under AICTE, but UGC would retain the power to grant institutions university status.

AICTE officials said they had started the exercise because deemed universities did not share information on their campus, seat or student numbers or graduate and placement data.

“AICTE will only check if the facilities available are [proportionate to the number of students and courses] based on standard quality norms,” said AICTE chairman Anil Shastrabudhe. “UGC permits [off-campus colleges, so] if theuniversities have colleges, there [should be] no problem. We want toensure that they have [adequate] facilities.”

The Supreme Court said deemed universities offering technical and engineering courses must come under AICTE,” said Rabu Manohar, a senior counsel of the Centre. “Most of these universities never had AICTE approval for engineering courses. It’s time for them to fall in line under AICTE or they will be in contempt of the apex court.”

Academicians disagree. They ask: Will these campuses register under a deemed university? If so, will AICTE step in the shoes of the UGC? Some senior academicians like former Anna University vice-chancellor M Ananthakrishnan want more drastic action.

“Off-campus campuses are illegal; the authorities should close them,” he said. “We need a uniform law and better enforcement.”