Colleges in and around the city are increasingly adopting technology to help their students apply to foreign universities without hassles, by enabling online verification of their certificates.
Loyola College, Queen Mary’s College, Amet University and Sathyabama University among others, have tied up with software companies to help students get their documents authenticated, verified and saved online. This not only protects the documents from virtual and physical damage, but also ensures quick verification by banks and colleges, said officials.
Avira Tharakan, CEO of myeasydocs.com, an IIT-Madras incubated company that provides a global document verification system to students and colleges, said students are choosing ways to authenticate their certificates sitting at home instead of running from door to door.
“For instance, if a student wants to go abroad for higher education, couriering transcripts to the university and asking them to verify them would take at least two months. Now, when students register online and upload their certificates, an account is created for them and the university rejects or approves the verification of certificates. The link of the approved certificates is sent directly to foreign universities,” he said.
The electronic transcript and online verification exchange service was unveiled by former University Grants Commission chairman, Arun Nigavekar, on Thursday.
An official at Bharathiyar University, which adopted the online verification system last year, said the number of fake mark-sheets being submitted by students to get a seat at their university was on the rise.
“This system will ensure that only verified mark-sheets and certificates get through,” he said.
“Also, many universities in India and abroad insist we send them verified certificates of our students who are receiving scholarships. It is a lot of work storing certificates and going through them when needed. Online storage saves time and trouble,” he added.
The idea of storing documents on the cloud and ensuring they are protected was worked out by a team of postgraduate students of IIT-M, after which it was given to myeasydocs. The attempt was to prevent document fraud in a cost-efficient and organised manner, said Shyam Balachandran, assistant professor at IIT-M who guided the research for this initiative.
