CHENNAI: To avoid any incident of question paper leak, the higher education department has instructed the registrars of state universities to computerise the process of distributing the question papers to examination centres through email just before the start of the exam.
The initiative has been successfully pilot-tested by the Tamil Nadu Teachers Education University (TNTEU), which was marred by a question paper leak incident last year.
After its successful implementation in TNTEU, secretary of higher education department C Samayamoorthy, in a recent meeting with the registrars, directed them to pilot the process in one subject first before implementing it completely for the entire exam.
In another move to streamline education, especially in PhD, the secretary recommended the universities to start a common online portal for PhD, where all registrations and updates related to research work can be done. He also asked registrars to conduct a centralised entrance exam for PhD courses.
After implementation of the process, the students will not have to write exam separately for various state universities’ PhD course, said higher education department officials.
To enhance the quality of PhD and ensure its timely completion, registrars have been directed to acquire the software being used by Anna University for providing affiliation to colleges and PhD registration and to implement the same in their universities.
The secretary highlighted that the department has received many complaints from students that their PhD guides are delaying the submission of their project/thesis. So, he instructed registrars that the list of external examiners/foreign faculties for evaluation of PhD thesis should not be obtained from the guides of the projects; instead it has been suggested to obtain it from the registrar, University of Madras, currently.
He also instructed to take steps to improve the standard of internal exams and to provide internal marks to students based on their participation in seminars, viva voce, group projects and building interpersonal relationships with staff and students, instead of giving marks based on just theory and attendance.
“Students take the internal exams very lightly. We need to make this exam relevant,” said an official of the department.
The secretary also directed registrars to focus on revenue generation by insisting the faculty and students to file patent on suitable projects, so that those patents can turn into products and university can take steps to obtain regular royalty from those products.
He asked registrars to fix the target for revenue generation to each department. The registrars were directed to identify heads of departments (HoDs) in universities who have been HoDs in the same department for more than three years and to furnish the list to the government.
They were also instructed to appoint faculty to the post of HoD on a rotation basis for every three years. Also, 30% of teaching posts in university shall be filled using retired professors, professor of emeritus, he said.
“To avoid fresh appointment of new faculty members, the government is doing this. If you don’t employ youth, it will be difficult for us to keep our students updated,” said a faculty of University of Madras.