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The new teachers coming out of our training colleges seem ‘tailor-made’ to reduce education to a farce. A Bangalore University task force report says 70 per cent of the projects submitted by M Ed students are purchased from touts and passed off as their own

Abandon all hope, all ye who see the country as a rising academic force on the global scene. The basis for our pessimism is a Bangalore University report which states, without any ambiguity whatsoever, that 70 per cent of the projects handed in by post-graduate teacher-trainees are purchased in the informal ‘market’ and passed off as their own work. In one incredible instance, a principal of an M Ed college was found to be a shop employee who had been ‘requisitioned’ on the day the college was inspected.

 
BU had constituted a task force to check the functioning of M Ed colleges, and its findings are startling, to say the least. Speaking to Bangalore Mirror, its chairman Karan Kumar said, “When we visited Gold Field College of Education in Bangarpet, we did not see even a single staff member except for the principal, who introduced himself as Dr Venkat Rao. His CV looked good as he was well-qualified and had degrees from a university in Andhra Pradesh. However, when we asked how many students there were in the college, he could not reply.
This was when we suspected his credentials.”
 
That wasn’t all. When the task force asked whether the college had an adequate library, the principal said he had never visited a library! Neither was he aware whether the faculty or students were using one. The students had not signed the admission register and there was no attendance register for them. Despite there being no internal assessment, the results of the fictitious test had been sent to BU.
 
“This was when we decided to monitor the principal’s activities. We got to know that his name was not N Venkat Rao as mentioned on his certificates. His real name was Venkatesh. We found out that the college management had sent a tyre shop superintendent to pose as principal during our visit,” said Kumar.
 
The task force has concluded that as much as 70 per cent of the projects handed in by M Ed students are fake. “It is mandatory for every student to submit a project report. So, they go to a tout, get an old project report, and change the binding and the front page which has the name of the original authors. They submit the ‘report’ to their college and get their degrees,” said Kumar. The task force report further says that 90 per cent of the projects are done by students without the guidance of qualified staff.
 
According to sources, ‘ready-made’ projects retail for as much as Rs 60,000 and there are companies dealing exclusively in the ‘business’. For example, when a student visits these companies, he/she is given a list of projects and the corresponding ‘rates’. Most of these are either old projects which are circulated among students or ready-made ones.
 
The report notes that many principals act as guides without any cap on the number of students attached to them – a clear violation of the rules. In some cases, there were more than nine students attached to a guide.
 
Commenting on the sorry findings, T Narayanappa, principal of MES College, said, “These serious lapses are coming at a time when the number of teachers is falling. It is actually a chain reaction. If a person becomes a teacher using fake methods, one can imagine what will happen to the students taught by that person. This will have a negative effect on society as a whole, as teaching is the only profession that teaches all other professions.”