Bhubaneswar, Jan. 11: The arrest of two persons from Samantarapur yesterday for allegedly duping candidates on the pretext of issuing BEd certificates has exposed the trend of institutes ripping off students with the offer of fake degrees.
"The accused, identified as Baibhav Gautam from Uttar Pradesh and Rajesh Singh from Bihar, ran Kautilya Educational Institute that promised BEd certificates from Kashmir University to aspiring candidates," said a police source. The cops also recovered several documents from the rented house the duo were arrested from.
The arrest comes in the wake of the University Grants Commission (UGC)'s letter urging the state government to initiate action against fake degrees that were being distributed by a Rourkela-based private institute last October.
Nababharat Siksha Parishad did not have recognition under the UGC Act 1956, but it claimed to be affiliated to Sambalpur University. The UGC had asked the state government to lodge an FIR and take legal action against the institute for duping students and offering fake degrees.
In August last year, school and mass education minister Debi Prasad Mishra ordered a departmental probe into dubious institutes allegedly issuing fake certificates. These institutes allegedly offered fake certificates for general and technical education courses.
The state in recent years has seen a mushrooming of such institutes offering fake certificates, especially BEd.
The government has emphasised on the importance of trained teachers and made the Teacher Eligibility Test mandatory for recruitment in government schools and colleges. However, the lack of adequate colleges offering BEd courses have pushed aspiring teachers to explore other options, sometimes falling prey to such fraudulent institutes.
In 2016 alone, cops busted five institutes offering fake BEd degrees. However, according to academics, the number of unreported cases could be even higher.
At present, there are 14 government-run colleges that offer BEd courses to 2,000 students. Last year, the government decided to offer BEd and MEd courses at 14 more colleges to meet the shortage of trained manpower.
The 14 teacher education institutes will operate under Utkal, Berhampur, Sambalpur, Ravenshaw, Fakir Mohan, North Odisha universities as well as the Srijagannth Sanskrit Vishvavidyalaya.
These colleges will offer either four-year integrated BA or BSc programmes or two-year BEd courses.
However, academics have raised doubts about the availability of teaching faculty at these institutes. "There are few qualified MEd faculty who can teach at the BEd colleges. Besides, the revised NCTE norms (NCTE Regulation, 2014) for two-year BEd courses with 100 seats makes it mandatory to have 16 faculty members instead of the eight for one-year courses. The state needs to appoint 112 more educators for its 14 teacher training institutes. It must solve these issues first," said academic S.K. Dash.
