Universities will be asked to provide information on website

In order to know the authentic details about the universities across the country, the UGC has asked them to upload all information on their websites, a top UGC official said today.
The decision to this effect was taken at a recent meeting and the Universities are asked to provide all information like strength of students, faculty, fees collected and courses provided, UGC Secretary, Dr Jaspal Singh Sandhu told reporters on the sidelines of the Convocation of Avanashilingam University for Women here.
Those universities who fail to provide the details, will be placed in defaulters list and also there is the possibility of stopping UGC funds, Sandhu said adding the mechanism was awaiting the Centre's nod.

Similarly, a National Academic Depository (NAD) an inter-operable digital store house of academic awards (degrees, diplomas, certificates, mark-sheets) available on 24 X 7 online mode, will be in operation in a couple of months, he said.
It provides a system for lodging, retrieval, authentication and verification of academic awards in digital format for students, academic institutions, boards, eligibility assessment bodies and other user/verifying entities like bank, employer companies, government agencies and academic institutions, he said.
The Depository allows lodging of Academic awards in a digital format, maintaining the integrity of access to the database and of the awards lodged in the database and allows students, who will be given password, to retrieve their lodged academic awards at any time, Sandhu said, adding that this would an effective deterrence to fake and forged paper certificates.

On complaints about the existence of fake universities and also irregularities in State universities, particularly in appointments, Sandhu said that UGC was monitoring the functioning of the universities and coming out with a list of fake universities from time to time and some were blacklisted.
As far as State run Universities, it was for the State government to take action, the official said.