Jalandhar, August 8
With a poor academic atmosphere and infrastructure, the Punjab Technical University (PTU) seems to have become an examination-conducting and admission-making body. It did not conduct examinations and admissions even after coming into being 12 years ago. It does not run any course on campus or anywhere else. Has it become dysfunctional,
ask many.
PTU controls the fate of three lakh students and has an annual revenue of Rs 300 crore. It faces embarrassment almost every day for lapses in admissions or declaring results of engineering and pharmacy courses.
It has fewer than 12 regular employees, that too at the senior level. Even results, detailed marks cards etc, are prepared by ad hoc staff. It lacks systems and structures needed for a university. Even examination-related work is done by manpower of a company.
Academic needs of the state, considered backward in respect of IT and engineering education, the preferred courses to secure jobs today are not seriously met by the varsity.
Two days back candidates and their parents, who had come for a third round of counselling, ransacked the campus for not being shown the correct status of seats in colleges.
Shortage of staff is blamed for the episode. It has two Deans. Dean (Academics) Dr VK Arora will retire this month and the deputation of Dean
Dr NP Singh will end in October’s first week. Distance Education programme has no Dean. More than one lakh students have education via this mode.
Sarojini Gautam Sharda, a PCS official and PTU Registrar, has been transferred, but told to hold charge of the post.
Deputy Dean Amanpreet Singh has also returned to the Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology (SLIET). Deputy Dean Sarabjit Singh is to be relieved on Monday to join as assistant professor at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jalandhar. Two more senior regular officials have applied for leave to do PhD.
Only seven regular employees, including two Deputy Deans, two Deputy Registrars, one assistant officer and two superintendents will be left to run the varsity. With this regular staff, admission has been allowed in 17 new colleges, in addition to earlier 97 colleges, without inspections thereof.
Staff of electronic data processing centre prepares the result of PTU’s Distance Education centres. It is managed and paid by the Distance Education Programme (DEP) Association, members of which own such centres. This raises questions of fairness and objectivity. There is no system to check the eligibility of students admitted to these centres. Eligibility criteria for students doing courses through distance education are different from those doing regular studies. All get the same degree.
Online common entrance test (CET) counselling held this time left many candidates unhappy after PTU wrongly admitted some students to a Hoshiarpur-based pharmacy institute that was de-recognised. A senior official said the university was at fault in allowing on-line counselling and admissions. The university was not prepared to handle the job. This left admission seekers unhappy.
Earlier, key mismatch with question papers and wrong solutions to 10 questions in the CET paper had delayed the declaration of CET result. Earlier there were complaints of errors in declaration of semester results due to wrong scanning of answer sheets. The result was delayed by a month due to which the examination of the next semester had to be put off thrice.
