Punjabi varsity to start new courses

Puar said that computer science course was being introduced in all the affiliated colleges of the university at BA-level as an additional subject. He said that computer training was being arranged by the university for the employees to make them conversant with the use of computers.

Puar, who was addressing a press conference, said that plans had been drawn up for the development of the regional centre at Talwandi Sabo. These included construction of a new teaching block and a residential complex consisting of 18 flats there during the coming year.

The vice-chancellor said that the university was facing resource crunch despite increasing its resources from different fields. The university faced additional liability because it had implemented revised pay scales for the non-teaching staff. If the new pay scales for teaching staff were implemented the university would face a deficit of about Rs 9 crore. While the state government wanted that the university should fend for itself and generate more resources, it had its own limitations, he said. The university would request the state government to share major burden of its deficit, he disclosed.

Puar said that the university had earned about Rs 5 lakh in US dollars from foreign students, mostly from Ethiopia. However, he made it clear that the university had decided not to increase the quota of NRI seats in different courses.

He said that the government gave a bulk grant to the university every year. There is an increase of about eight to ten per cent every year in this grant over the previous year’s budget. However, despite financial constraints, the university had no plans to increase tuition fee.

Puar said that the results of the BA Part I (30,000 students) and MA Part I had been completely computerised and the detailed marks sheets had been so designed that no tampering was possible. In the last four years no case of leakage of paper had been reported.

He said the university would soon have a new upgraded telephone exchange and after commissioning of this exchange there would be a provision to have 1,800 telephone lines on the campus. It was planned to provide a telephone to each teacher on the campus.

Commenting on alleged irregularities pointed out by university inspection teams during their visits to dental colleges being run by private organisations, the vice-chancellor said that most of these objections had been removed. The Dental Council of India had permitted dental colleges to appoint teachers up to the age of 65 years in view of an acute shortage of dental teachers.

He asserted that entrance tests had improved the quality of students joining different courses. This was evident from the increase in number of students qualifying the NET conducted by the University Grants Commission. While hardly any student from the university had qualified this test in 1993-94, this year 37 students from the university qualified the test.