Certificates to be on the Internet so employers can verify credentials

PUNE: With 729 reported cases of forged degree certificates, University of Pune (UoP) plans to put up all degree certificates online, so employers can verify claims of candidates from the current academic year.

In January, UoP came across 729 cases, second highest in all state universities,  of forged degree certificates. The cases came to light, when employers approached the varsity to check credentials of prospective employees.

To curb this menace, the varsity is making all degree certificates available on the  Internet. On Tuesday, Vice-Chancellor R K Shevgaonkar said, “The Examination Department has already scanned all degree certificates till 2007. We plan to put all scanned certificates on the website. We conducted a successful demonstration of this recently. Degree certificates of students passing out this year will be scanned and put in the public domain, so that any company can view and verify credentials of prospective employees.”

Varsity is presently working on minor issues such as access to users, server capacity to store the information and ways of retrieving the information.

The Vice-Chancellor was confident that the move will nip the menace in the bud. He said, “It is beyond our control to prevent elements that forge degree certificates. Putting scanned certificates will defeat the designs of these elements, as employers can easily access and verify certificates.”

Besides this, the UOP is also working on a parallel project of providing Unique Identification Number to all students to streamline the activities. The Vice-Chancellor said, “We plan to issue UID number to First Year students in the present academic year. All academic and administrative information about the students will be stored on the server under this UID. This information will also be put in the public domain.” For starters, the UID will be issued to its campus staff in next three months.

NEW INITIATIVES

- Putting up all degree certificates online to fight the forgery menace.

- Issuing Unique Identification Number to all students starting with First Year students in the present year to streamline academic activities.