Students suffer as online academic verification on hold at IK Gujral Punjab Technical University

Tribune News Service

Kapurthala, August 27

Hundreds of students who have passed out from IK Gujral Punjab Technical University (IKGPTU) and have applied for online verification of their educational credentials, to apply for higher education and jobs abroad, are in a deep trouble as the university’s online service is on hold for over 40 days now.

Career at crossroads

• The students have alleged that the verification process was taking too long and their admission and job prospects were getting affected
• The university authorities have reportedly not released payment to its online service provider, owing to which the online verification is held up
• A student said his application could be rejected if his college in Canada does not get response to the online verification of his degree in another two weeks

Since this is the key time for September intake in Canada, the IKGPTU alumni are in a fix. The students showed emails that they have received from the Canada’s International Qualifications Assessment Service (IQAS) or Worldwide Education Services (WES) with a message that their application was being put on hold as their transcript/degree was not getting verified by the university’s online service. The Canadian service has given the students September 15 as the last date for getting a response from the university, failing which their assessment would be cancelled.

The university authorities have reportedly not released payment to its online service provider, owing to which online verification is held up. The students are left with the only option of applying manually, which is not feasible in all cases, besides being time consuming.

The students have alleged that the process was taking too long and their admission and job prospects were getting affected. Hashim, a B.Tech passout from a college in Mohali, said: “I had applied for my transcript from the varsity on July 21 so as to apply for a job in Canada. It has been five weeks since my application is lying stuck.”

Prateek Chhabra, who passed out from a Jalandhar-based college, said he wanted to go for higher education in September intake. “My application can get rejected if my college in Canada does not get response to the online verification of my degree in another two weeks. My career is at crossroads because of the negligence of the IKGPTU authorities,” he said.

The university has three portals including ptuexam.com, ptudocs.com and support.ptu. ac.in, all of which are not providing any online services. Other than online verification of degrees, other services like online re-evaluation, provision of degrees and detailed marks certificates, paper setting process and even data entry of students have been lying on hold with the IKGPTU.

It is now that the university has got into action and has set up a committee for hiring of software services for providing online, examination-related works under the chairmanship of Dean Dr RPS Bedi. The committee has been tasked to explore the options available in the market and accordingly hire the services for all online and examination services.

IKGPTU Vice-Chancellor Susheel Mittal said: “We are in the process of resolving the problem. For the time being, we shall be flashing an email ID on the website on which the students shall be able to apply for verification. We shall respond on that till the online services and our portal become functional again.”