City's local colleges have been adding new courses this season. With popularity of once defunct course, BBA picking up gradually, city's MCM DAV College for women has started a this course from 2012-2013 current academic session.

The college has got approval from Panjab University to start three new courses- M.A. - I (Economics), M.Com - I and BBA - I.

The much awaited news has opened another door of opportunities for students, who have been looking for commerce post graduation in colleges, which till few years ago was offered only by Panjab University.

Source: TOI

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The Maharashtra government has created the much needed teaching posts in 14 government medical colleges (GMCs) across the state.

For long, the colleges were under the MCI scanner for inadequate staff and were repeatedly warned about filling the posts of teaching and senior resident doctors. It is for the first time that the state government has taken cognizance of the issue and created 351 teaching posts, through the Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER), across 14 GMCs.

The new 351 posts include 38 posts of professors, 67 associate professors, 217 lecturers/assistant professors, 11 medical officers, 9 child health doctors, 5 epidemiology and 4 statisticians.

"The government has realised the urgent need to fill the teaching posts as per MCI norms. DMER has created 351 posts. We now plan to conduct similar posts in nursing and physiotherapy colleges which too are facing threat of
disaffiliation by the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences," said DMER head Dr Pravin Shingare.

The state government and DMER have been under tremendous MCI pressure for many years for filling up these posts and managed affairs by transferring teachers temporarily to the colleges being inspected. Medical education minister Vijay Kumar Gavit had been promising to fill all vacant posts since the time he took charge of the ministry. But it is for the first time that something concrete has happened.

Source: TOI

With some tweaking in the proposed format, National Institute of Technology (NITs) on Wednesday adopted the common entrance for admission to undergraduate programme from 2013 giving 40 per cent weight age to board results and 60 per cent weight age to the main exam for preparing merit list.

Students seeking admission to these institutes would not have to appear for the advance test as had been proposed earlier.

"The formula worked out is very simple...40 per cent weightage to board results and 60 per cent to the mains," chairman of the standing committee of NITs, R A Mashelkar, told PTI here after a meeting chaired by HRD minister Kapil Sibal.

He said the 40 per cent weight age to the board results will be given after the process of normalization of marks of the state board. A committee comprising NIT directors would be set up to look into the issue of normalisation.

Officials said the committee would basically look into validation of the formula already proposed for normalization of marks with the respective board results.

The meeting comes in wake of the IITs arriving at a compromising formula last week for admission to undergraduate programmes, taking the top 20 percentile of successful candidates of their Boards for preparing merit list and their performance in the advance test.

The government had on May 28 announced the common entrance test for IITs and other centrally funded institutes.

Under the new system, for admission to all the centrally funded institutes like the NITs there would be 40 percentage weightage for performance in Class XII (after normalisation of marks), 30 per cent weightage to performance in main and 30 per cent in the advanced test.

Source: TOI

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West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee today said a Private University Bill would be introduced in the assembly within a day or two for setting up higher education institutions by the private sector in the state.

"In a day or two, the Private University Bill will be introduced," Banerjee said at a function of South Point High School, the largest in the country in terms of student count.

"Why do you have to go to London or other places for higher studies when we can provide the best here?" the chief minister asked.

Banerjee offered the school, which has a space crunch, a 4.2 acre plot near the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass behind Ruby General Hospital and asked the school authorities to set up a college and then a university.

"South Point is a wonderful institution with possibly 20 to 25 lakh alumni spread all over the world," she said about the school.

It was set up by Satikanta Guha and his wife Pritilata in 1954 with 16 students to grow to be one with the highest number of students in the world within a span of 30 years while retaining the position for eight years.

Speaking earlier, Harsh Vardhan Lodha, the trustee of South Point Education Society announced introduction of the Priyamvada Birla Memorial Scholarship for students in undergraduate studies in an engineering, technical or medical colleges within West Bengal.

"The amount of scholarship will be Rs 25 lakh per year and will be given to 2 students each year," Lodha said.

Source: TOI

Tripura will soon have an Indian Institute of Information Technology with the Centre approving a proposal for it.

"Though no formal letter has been received by the state government yet, we came to know that the human resource development ministry has issued a notification, clearing the proposal for establishing the IIIT," special secretary to higher education Kishore Ambuly said.

During his recent visit to Tripira, HRD minister Kapil Sibal had said one IIIT would come up at Agartala to give a major push to the IT sector in the state.

The state government has identified 50 acre land at Bodhjungnagar, about 12 km away from here, for the proposed IIIT, an official said.

The IIIT would be set up on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model, he said, adding that ONGC, OTPC, NEEPCO and six private players of West Bengal have agreed to invest in the project.

An amount of Rs 128 crore is expected to be spent for setting up the proposed IIIT.