Yogesh Avasthi

By Yogesh Avasthi | Jul 29, 2016,  http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/ahmedabad/cover-story/Education-board-cracks-its-whip-on-mass-copying/articleshow/53439921.cms The state education board has been vindicated in its suspicion of mass copying at three class 10 board examination centres. When results were announced on Tuesday, only four out of 251 students, who had appeared in supplementary examinations after being suspected of cheating in March exam, managed to pass. While cracking the whip on 468 students who were under the scanner, the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board (GSHSEB) also came across a new modus operandi of mass cheating that escaped camera surveillance inside examination classrooms. Other than the four that passed, the rest scored marks between 0 and 18 from a total of 100. The 251 students were suspected of cheating in Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) that carry 50% weightage in a 100-mark question paper. These students had given the exa

By Yogesh Avasthi | Jul 27, 2016,  http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/ahmedabad/cover-story/On-hire-MBA-grads-for-Rs-10000-per-month/articleshow/53404225.cms Master of Business Administration, which used to be a status symbol only two decades ago, has reduced itself to a poor man's degree if the salaries offered to fresh MBA grads at GTU are anything to go by. While around 62% MBA seats are vacant this year, employers are hiring MBA grads for as less as Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 and the varsities are not even letting out a whimper. Gujarat Technological University conducted a three-day placement for a finance company which made it clear beforehand that it would offer not more than Rs 1.44 lakh to Rs 1.80 lakh per annum to students from Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodara and Surat. Rural students would be hired for Rs 1.20 lakh to Rs 1.44 lakh per annum by the company, according to the information put up on GTU website by the varsity's Integrated Training and Placement Cell (ITA

By Yogesh Avasthi | Jul 20, 2016, http://www.ahmedabadmirror.com/ahmedabad/cover-story/Degree-of-futility/articleshow/53290246.cms  (Ahmedabad Mirror Cover story) Four years after it started the integrated BA-BEd and BSc-BEd courses, Indian Institute of Teacher Education (IITE) finally got the much-awaited recognition from National Council for Teacher Education last year. But this recognition is valid only for degrees issued after November 2015. Around 320 students who enrolled in the four-year integrated courses (from 2011 to 2014) in the state-funded university fear being left in the lurch as their degrees are not recognised yet. They now want retrospective approval of their course by NCTE. For the benefit of the first batch (2011- 12), the state government issued a special notification stating that it was eligible for teachers' posts in state board schools. The state government, however, did not issue any such notification for 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-