EDUCATION

  UK students protest fee hike

LONDON: Students marched through Londonon Wednesday to protest cuts to public spending and a big increase in tuition fees. 

Police said more than 2,000 people were taking part as the march set off with chants of "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts". 

Some 4,000 police officers were deployed along the route, which wound from the University of London to the city's financial district. At Trafalgar Square, a group of protesters erected more than 20 tents at the foot of Nelson's Column in the latest spinoff of the Occupy Wall Street protest camp movement. 

Annette Webb, an international development student at Portsmouth University, said tripling tuition fees to £9,000 from next year "will price out most students". "It will mean that education is only for the rich and I believe it should be for everyone," she said. 

Don't agree with Murthy on IIT education quality: Sibal

2011-10-07 18:40:00
Last Updated: 2011-10-07 21:36:33

​World's cheapest tablet Sakshat to be launched on Wednesday Neemrana: HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on Friday refused to subscribe to Infosys chief Narayanamurthy's view about slump in the quality of education in IITs and pitched for creating more such institutes in the country.  "We are capable of producing world class institutions like IITs and IIMs and we need to have more of these institutions to reach almost every student capable and aspiring to get into these institutes," Sibal told a gathering at NIIT University here.  "I don't believe or adhere to what Narayanamurthy has said," he told an event to mark the 10 million milestone for School Learning Division (SLD) of NIIT.  Murthy had recently voiced his displeasure over the quality of engineers that pass out of the IITs and said there is a need to overhaul the selection criteria for students seeking admission to the prestigious technology institutes.  Sibal said the ministry is in the process of setting up 'National Vocational Educational Qualificational framework' possibly by next year, so that students can take up courses according to their interests.  He also said that 26 new institutions are being set up across Mumbai where graphics related courses will be taught.  To a query on the quota issue, he said, "Quotas are not for creating barriers in the society, but to bridge the same. We have to rationalise our society."