Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTU-H) degrees are now available online, of course not for sale, but for verification by the recruiters and universities abroad.
The university, perhaps, is the first one in the country to offer this facility and it is likely to curb the fake certificate menace creating headache for the recruiters. “Any university abroad, recruiting agency or an IT company can now verify the genuineness of the applicant’s degree easily,” says Koorapati Eshwara Prasad, Director of Evaluation, JNTUH.
Companies interested in verification have to register on the JNTU website and pay Rs. 500 per verification. The genuineness will be confirmed to them in three to four days after checking the database. The service will be free to the government agencies. “As of now database of students after 2010 is available and previous details will be updated,” said T. Kishen Kumar Reddy, Rector, JNTUH. The JNTUH graduates are perhaps the largest group that goes overseas for higher education or gets recruited by top IT companies in the country given the large number of graduates produced. Moreover, JNTUH graduates are also sought-after by IT companies given the Hyderabad’s brand name. This has led to menace of fake certificates that are easily available in the city.
In fact, recruiters say the highest fake certificates submitted by the students are either from JNTUH or Osmania University. This was recently confirmed by the Wipro Chairman, Ajeem Premji, who expressed his concern to the Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao during his visit recently. Mr. Premji told the Chief Minister that the maximum fake certificates they uncover are from Hyderabad.
Realising the enormity of the problem and the damage caused to brand Hyderabad, the Chief Minister instructed the officials to ask all the varsities in Telangana to follow JNTUH. Officials from Osmania University recently visited the JNTUH and studied the project, and are likely to implement the same soon. OU started the online verification (OLIVE) project long back but it was confined to just US embassy that faced similar problems.
