Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Government to review University Education System on Tuesday

Four years after the government restore its central university system by bringing in numerous such new centers of higher education to provide access with excellence, there is little to show in outcomes and a worried government is set to appraisal its growth strategy.

President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will evaluation the bottlenecks in infrastructure, research, and curriculum and teachers crisis on Tuesday, according to officials in the human resource growth ministry and central universities.

“Both the high offices of Indian government may put in place a apparatus to advance their interface with the central universities,” said an official of the HRD ministry, who refuse to be named. “The quality of our recent education system leaves much to be preferred. During the 12th Plan (2012-17), the focus is on excellence, the review gathering will dwell on it in detail.”

There are 42 central universities in India, as well as 16 set up in 2009-10. All the new universities have poor infrastructure and don’t have enduring campuses, the program is not contemporary and attracting the faculty is a challenge. As a result, they are not attracting adequate number of students. Most of the new universities don’t even have 1,000 students each and the faculty deficiency is as high as 30-50%, executive data show.

“None of the universities in India right now are in top 200 catalogs of best universities in the world and this is a disturbing point. The universities need to change their approach and develop into contemporary, from just knowledge to investigate and be industry-ready,” said Abdul Wahid, vice-chancellor of the Central University of Kashmir.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Adobe opens online education store for Singapore

Hot on the heels of the new Creative Cloud contribution service launched in Singapore last month, Adobe today show the Education Store for the local market, giving students and teachers an easier way to acquire its suite of software at suddenly discounted prices.

Just how steep is steep? The CS6 Master compilation, for example, is retailing for S$3,802.50, but expenses only S$290.63 for teachers and students. It was potential to purchase Adobe’s products at educational pricing previous to this, but it wasn’t easy finding local distributors certified to sell them.

The Education Store smooths the retail process, and offers a greater diversity of software such as CS6 Production Premium and Photoshop Lightroom 4. Buyers can also be certain that they are buying genuine products honestly from Adobe instead of uncertain software from a sketchy neighborhood IT store.

However, it seems that Adobe’s prices may be a slight on the pricey side, yet after the education discount. For example, I buy a copy of CS6 Design and Web Premium back when I was still studying for S$139 (GST included) on this site, but Adobe’s Education Store’s inquire price is S$193.75 before tax.