SNIPPETS

New IIMs look for joint admission strategy

Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi, has tied up with three other newly set up IIMs — Raipur, Rohtak and Trichy — to work out a common admission strategy for the upcoming academic session 2011-12.

As per the plan, all four IIMs will conduct common group discussions and personal interviews for 3,000 CAT candidates. Accordingly, call letters to a cumulative list of 3,000 CAT candidates, who qualify the minimum cut-off marks for appearing in group discussions and personal interviews for the respective institutions, would be sent shortly.

The initial stage of scanning aspiring students through discussions and interviews would be held between February 28 and March 6, 2011 in Bangalore. This will be followed by similar processes between March 8 and March 13, 2011 at Mumbai, March 15 and March 22, 2011 at Delhi, March 26 and 30, 2011 in Calcutta and on April 2, 2011 at the four concerned new IIMs.

IIM-Ranchi will admit as many as 70 students to its postgraduate diploma in management (PGDM) programme for the 2011 session. Raipur and Trichy IIMs will admit 60 students each. Rohtak has been allowed to admit 120 students.

This joint venture is expected to ease the stress of aspirants who otherwise would have had to hop from one interview to another. Besides, the new IIMs will not have to rely on leftover candidates from the established IIMs.

The new IIMs have also worked out plans to share resources in the field of IT and other education materials, besides holding classes through video-conferencing.

XLRI’s new branch at Bhubaneshwar

The XLRI School of Business and Human Resources, Jamshedpur, is now contemplating opening its branch at Bhubaneswar.

The board of governors of the institution decided to go ahead with its plan of opening its branch in Orissa after the Naveen Patnaik government agreed to allot 35 acres of land near Jatni, a small township located between Bhubaneshwar and Puri.

Officials at the XLRI said that the institute was still trying its best to open its second campus at Hyderabad. The institution has already started the process for off loading its six-month Entrepreneurship Development Programme at the vacant land near Xavier Institute of Tribal Education (XITE) in Gamharia under neighbouring Seraikela-Kharsawan district.

New norms for technical institutes

The new set of norms announced by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for setting up institutions have disappointed the managements of technical institutes.

The Punjab Unaided Technical Institution Association, (PUTIA), said that the new norms would only make things harder for managements of institutes and for students.

“The AICTE has substantially increased the processing fees from colleges, but on the other hand, the tuition fees have not been increased for the last 10 years,” said J S Dhaliwal, president of PUTIA.

He pointed out that more than 90 per cent of institutes in Punjab were private and self-financed.

“The increase in processing fees will impact students also because ultimately the burden will shift from colleges to students,” he said.

PUTIA members are also upset that the AICTE has withdrawn the power from the state governments to approve polytechnic courses.

They pointed out that the fee for polytechnic courses has been hiked from Rs 1.5 million to Rs 5 million.