Last week Jammu and Kashmir High Court gave a landmark judgment calling for considering written interviews as the main basis for selection to public services and not academic performance. This historical judgment has direct bearing on the system which is in vogue for recruiting people for various government jobs in Jammu and Kashmir. By virtue of this judgment, the weightage given to the academic performance of aspirant for a government job stands defied, and the right course is to hold a uniform written test for all aspirants to evaluate their merit.
The judgment of the court has come at a time when fake degree holders are fast out numbering the candidates who burn their midnight oil to earn a degree. There are unique stories attached to the fake degree holders. Believe it or not! There are incidents where a student approached to the university to scale down his pass percentage in a particular examination. As narrated by an acquaintance, a candidate in south Kashmir obtained degree from a university through distance mode without attending even a single class or even glancing at the books in which he was awarded the degree. Since these fake and deemed universities have their own bid for awarding a degree to a student, this south Kashmir boy had chosen the pass percentage of 98 for ‘earning’ the degree. After being awarded the degree with pass 98% marks, the student felt guilty on account of percentage he had ‘got’. To make it look more genuine, he approached the university to scale down the percentage to around 90.
Now the judgment of High Court based on the premise that different educational institutions have different standards, the academic performance of the students cannot be weighed as uniform, is a big relief to the meritorious candidates. So the right course  for government recruiting agency would be  to hold a uniform  written test for all the aspirants for advertised post(s), who have graduated or passed  from different Universities  and  Secondary School Board and evaluate their merit on the basis of their performance  in such written  examination. However, the court should form a committee which will monitor the implementation of its direction in totto.
Meanwhile, there is yet another menace of instant degrees, which has pushed the meritorious lot to the wall. In this modern era of the online education explosion, some accredited colleges and universities found that they were unable to compete with the richer educational institutions; they started to offer instant degrees to pick up their revenue. People are lured to pay and get any degree within days. Many look for these ‘revolutionary’ college degrees just to advance their career with an, ‘authentic’ college degree that’s issued by unaccredited colleges and universities. There are instant degrees handed out to aspirants within five days from a recognised college or university.
Some time back I came across a strange advertisement in a national daily. The most interesting line in the ad reads: “Here’s your chance to get to an associate, bachelor’s, master’s or even a doctorate degree without opening a single book…..Even if you struggled or barely made it out of high school”.
I have also come across similar type of ads targeting employees. Some of the ads read: “Do you want a higher paying job and have the skills to perform it, but employers say that don’t qualify for it because you lack a college degree? Are you tired of being passed over for job promotions and management positions, because you don’t have a college diploma on file to compete with your coworkers?”
These few questions posed by the advertisers are enough to lure people and get into the trap. The most interesting part is that you can “obtain an authentic college degree from accredited colleges and universities in less than five days. One big question remains: Are these degree earning programmes legalized? Is it true that one will be able to get an authentic college degree without even taking a single class?
These are few questions which have so far remained unanswered and all this is happening under the nose of authorities who otherwise have responsibility to check the veracity of such claims so that people are not duped.

The views are of the author &
not the institution he works for.
Feedback:  sajjadbazaz@greaterkashmir.com

Lastupdate on : Fri, 4 Nov 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 4 Nov 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 5 Nov 2011 00:00:00 IST