The government has appointed a task force to create a national database of academic qualifications to ensure confidentiality, authenticity, online verification and easy retrieval of degrees . In the private sector, software and insurance industry groups currently manage their own database to prevent fraud.According to the website of the ministry of human resource development (HRD), there are a total of 490 government-recognized universities in the country with around 2.54 million students getting a graduate or postgraduate degree every year. Apart from this, 9.5 million students clear their secondary school examinations.The database will not just stock documents virtually, but also create a system for storing hard copies, said Sanjay Dhande, chairman of the government-appointed task force and director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
The group was appointed by the HRD ministry, which oversees education, in January this year. Verification of degrees will be cheaper and quicker if the project is implemented.“We have prepared the road map of implementation, of which the first and foremost is that a law needs to be enacted to give legal standing to the database,” Dhande told Mint over phone from Kanpur. The task force, also entrusted with identifying a registered depository that would create the database, has formed two sub-committees to look into the matter.
Dhande said only registered depositories are being considered for the job.Another official of the task force, requesting anonymity since he is not authorized to speak to the media, said universities and various education boards will also be asked to upload documents online as the database is implemented.
He also said that legislation for the database is expected to be in place by September-October.
Academic certificates from school to graduate and postgraduate levels, including professional degrees, will be mandatorily registered with the depository through the respective boards, universities and other institutions once the legislation is passed, with information retrievable on payment of a fee.
Nasscom, the country’s information technology (IT) industry group, launched the National Skills Registry (NSR), a centralized database of employees for independent background checks, in January 2006.
Till date, 83 companies have joined NSR, comprising more than 70% of the workforce in IT and allied services.
This will really prevent the fraud degrees being used in economic world for getting a job and it will be easier too .Government should have done this much earlier.this will facilitate quick and easy degree verification.
ReplyDeleteThis is a welcome step. A much respite to the employers from making wrong decisions by appointing people with fake degrees.
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