From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Nov 22: In a massive drive for recruitment of lecturers to Government First Grade Colleges in Karnataka, the State Government has asked the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) to fill 2,154 vacancies through the Common Entrance Test mode.

Apart from ensuring transparency in the recruitment and appointments, Karnataka’s Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande said merit will be the basic criteria in the recruitment through the CET mode.

There would no interviews in the entire process of appointing faculty, he said while talking to reporters in Bengaluru on Saturday.

There are 411 government first grade colleges in the State.

The newly recruited lecturers would commence teaching during the next academic year (2015-16), the minister said.

Deshpande said the State Government has decided to establish smart classrooms for quality enrichment of teaching-learning processes.

As a pilot, small classrooms would be established in the select 50 government first grade colleges in the Gulbarga division.

Subjects taught by 4 to 5 good lecturers would be recorded and recordings would be distributed to colleges through local area network (LAN) or videos. This would help students to understand subjects better, he said.

Websites Planned for All Colleges

The concept would be expanded to other colleges in the entire State in a phased manner.

He said the Higher Education Department has planned to develop websites for all Government First Grade Colleges in the State to have e-identity for each college.

The websites would be created with the support of National Informatics Centre (NIC).Websites would contain details related to admission, courses, faculty and programmes etc.

The first phase has already witnessed the creation of websites for 20 out of the total of 411 government colleges.

A faculty of each college would be trained to create and maintain the website of their college.

"This initiative will slash costs, avoid dependence on the third party and prevent inordinate delays in updating websites," he said.

Upgradation to Community Colleges

Two government first grade colleges – VHD Home Science College and Government RC College, both in Bengaluru, have been upgraded into community colleges.

The two colleges would receive grants of Rs 1crore each from the UGC in this financial year.

Taxation and financial services in RC college and creche management and interior decoration are courses for imparting training in skills management.

Earn cum Learn Scheme

IT major Infosys Technologies has consented to impact in-house training to placement coordinators of government colleges.

A 10-day training would be given to 60 candidates per batch.
Deshpande said Placement Cells have been set up in all government first grade colleges.

A total of 14 students of government colleges have been selected in the campus selection by Wipro under its 'Earn cum Learn’ scheme.

Each of the students would be granted Rs 8 lakh for 4 years to pursue Masters of Science at institutes such as BITSPilani and Vellore Institute of Technology.

To encourage sports in colleges, he said Knowledge Commission Chairman Prof K Kasturiranganhas been asked to work out a comprehensive sports policy, the minister added.