Fewer foreign students at NID this year

The National Institute of Design’s (NID) move to attract foreign students at the campus suffered a major setback as India’s premier design institute managed to get only 15 NRI students.

Last year, when the idea to have 10 percent seats allotted for students of foreign origin and NRIs was proposed, the management gave it a green signal as the institute was confident of attracting students from across the globe.

However, the real story showed a completely different picture as the 15 students selected from the 26 applications are from countries such as Thailand, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Dubai and Qatar. The institute was expecting major participation from students from countries such as the UK, US, Australia and Germany which has a major chunk of NRIs.

Despite this, NID registrar Vijaya Deshmukh is still upbeat about the decision and said the poor response is because the institute did not adequately advertise overseas.

“The news of admission to foreign students has spread through word of mouth. As we plan for the next academic year, we intend to advertise with help from the Indian Embassy and through advertisement in newspapers overseas,” she said.

NID had decided to give admission to 10 percent foreign students from the
academic year 2013-14. As per the system, if the institute gives admission to 100 students, 10 additional students from the new criterion will be admitted.

Source: DNA News

NIDians begin Job Mela with Rs. 38 Lakh offer

If the whopping Rs38 lakh per annum offer to two students, the highest ever package offered to a student of National Institute of Design (NID) is anything to go by, the economic slowdown does not seem to have affected the prospects of design students. Placements Season-2012 at NID began on Friday.

The offer by Japan-based Toshiba company is reportedly more than three times higher than the highest offer made last year — thanks to a new initiative by the institute called Student Online Portfolios. This initiative aims to connect industries and students to minimise the gap between education, research and industries. The portfolios can be accessed by design community and industries.

As per the figures shared by the institute last year, Rs11.08 lakh per annum was the highest salary offered to students. In a press release, the institute said that on the first day of placements, 32 companies, including big names like Honda R&D (India) Pvt Ltd, TCS, Maruti Suzuki, Titan Industries and Toshiba, had participated.

Source: DNA News

Government mulls Centre of Excellence status for NID

In a development that may see National Institute of Design (NID) confer degrees in undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral studies in design, Anand Sharma (Union minister for industry, commerce and textile) on Wednesday said that the premier design school will soon be granted status of national centre of excellence by an act of the Parliament.

Sharma was in Gandhinagar to inaugurate NID’s new campus for postgraduate courses. This development will put the institute at par with Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) of the country.

“A bill in this regard is being prepared. I’m told that it will be ready by next week and would be presented to the union cabinet. NID will soon be declared a centre of excellence,” said Sharma. He was accompanied by Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) president Arjun Modhwadia and other party members.

Sharma also announced that Centre, as part of its 12th five-year plan, is looking at a proposal to set up centres for jewellery design, automobile research and design, recreation and a mess at NID’s Gandhinagar campus, costing the central exchequer Rs 25 crore for the same.

During his visit, Sharma also inspected baskets woven by artists from South Africa who were trained at NID.

Speaking about this development, Director of the institute, Pradyumna Vyas said that granting status of centre of excellence to NID will help the institute confer bachelors, masters and doctorates in design to its students.

Currently, it awards undergraduate degrees and a postgraduate diploma to its students. “Proposal in this regards is being discussed for past two years. We expect an announcement soon,” said Vyas.

Also announced were new NIDs at Hyderabad, Jorhat, Bhopal and Kurukshetra benefiting 2,000 design students every year.

Source: DNA News

‘Poison’ has gone, stain’s next

The gutka ban has made the railways happy. The paan and gutka stains have been costing the railways a bomb to clean the trains, with the spending touching Rs 1.5 crore annually.
The new swank violet trains that the railways inducted in service two years ago, have changed colour due to paan and gutka stains and spit marks on them. The railways anticipate that the new-age Siemens violet coloured trains would now get fewer spit stains.

However, commuter organisations are not too hopeful of a change. “Paan stains have damaged the aesthetics of the train and the ban on gutka may reduce spitting, but not actually reduce paan consumption,” Subhash Gupta, a member of National Railway Users Consultative Committee.

“Violet colour was a bit of a mistake as it has been covered up with dirt and paan stains. The colour of new trains should be a bit bolder so that it takes up the dirt and paan stains. The new trains will be made of steel and we will come up with a smarter colour pattern,’’ said a railway official.

The older trains had a reddish brown colour and the paan stain marks were camouflaged under it. However, the violet-white new shade of the Mumbai train has again exposed the habit of commuters in a big way. “The National Institute of Design has been asked to work on the aesthetics and design element of the new trains that are expected to come later this year.

Source: DNA News

NID framework to assess its performance

The National Institute of Design (NID) was conceived to train and create design professionals, undertake research and publication activities and promote design awareness. But has the premier design institute fulfilled the goals it set out to achieve?

So far, there was no evaluation system to check the institute’s performance but, starting this academic year, the NID has formed a results-framework document (RFD) to assess its own performance across various parameters at the end of the academic year.

As per the document, which has been uploaded online, it has two purposes __ moving the focus of the organisation from process orientation to results orientation and also to provide an objective and fair basis to evaluate the organisation’s overall performance.
The NID’s evaluation system is in keeping with the prime minister’s recent approval to an outline of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System (PMES) for government departments. Under PMES, each department is required to prepare a Results-Framework
Document (RFD). A RFD provides a summary of the most important results that an organisation expects to achieve during the financial year.

Institute director Pradyumna Vyas said the document would help to focus on priority areas.
Some of the important aspects included in the RFD are providing graduate diploma programme in design (GDPD) education, provide sector-specific post graduate diploma programme in design, offer sustainable design intervention and consultancy to industry, MSME and the crafts sector.

Different criterion has been allotted weightage in terms of percentage. As per the RFD, a score of 100 is excellent, while 98 is very good, 95 good, 90 fair and 85 poor.
As per the online document available, it seeks to address three issues - main objectives of the organisation for the year, actions proposed to achieve these objectives and measures to know progress made in implementing these actions.

Source: DNA India