The idea is to link Aadhaar to the performance record of students from Class X onwards
At least five million CBSE students’ details will be uploaded over a period of time after the labour ministry verifies that all of them have Aadhaar numbers. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint
New Delhi: Aadhaar, the Unique Identification Number that 890 million Indians possess, could soon find a mention on all educational certificates from Class X onward, in a move that will, apart from helping students and employers, also tackle the fake educational degree menace in India.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment and the Ministry of Human Resource Development-controlled Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) are in talks on the subject. The idea is to link Aadhaar to the performance record of students—marksheets, merit certificates and migration certificates, among others—from Class X onwards.
CBSE has already shared the past four years’ data (2011-14) of students who have passed Class X and XII from schools affiliated to the board with the labour and employment ministry for uploading onto the National Career Service (NCS) portal, two government officials said, requesting anonymity. At least five million CBSE students’ details will be uploaded over a period of time after the labour ministry verifies that all of them have Aadhaar numbers.
Aadhaar is mandatory for registering on NCS, a portal that Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched on 20 July as a precursor to establishing a national labour market information system.
“Beginning with CBSE, we can go to other boards and do the same. The purpose is to develop a kind of permanent career number,” said one of the two government officials cited above. “Once the Aadhaar number is seeded in a marksheet, it will continue to be replicated in all marksheets/certificates at the higher level, thus becoming a permanent number,” the official explained.
Once implemented, the move will also help both students and employers, the second official said. The NCS portal will act as a repository and an employer can request for a background verification through it.
“By just verifying the Aadhaar number, the background screening of a student can be done in minutes, and the NCS portal can facilitate this,” the second official said.
Fake degrees are a big problem in India. Delhi’s former law minister (belonging to the activist Aam Aadmi Party) was found to have falsified his degree. In June and July several thousand teachers with fake degrees in Bihar resigned after the Patna High Court asked authorities to crack down on the menace.
Aadhaar could also kick-start the plan to build a national academic repository—an old plan of the human resource development ministry. The second official said the Aadhaar-linking would also be helpful in tracking students’ mobility by creating an electronic registry and could be utilized while dematerialising (or putting in electronic form) academic certificates as was planned by the previous government. The government is in favour of such a repository and plans to table an Academic Repository bill in Parliament.
Till the time a formal respository is created, NCS will act as one. With the government in favour of a single labour market information system, where qualification providers, skill trainers, career counsellors, job seekers and job providers can operate on a single platform, such a move could be of real value.
Verification of educational credentials is not easy in India right now because of the sheer number of students, colleges and institutions, said Shreya Krishnan, head, marketing at background screening company First Advantage. “There is no integrated system, no aggregator for such a purpose. It is largely unorganized and background screening of candidates at times is very challenging,” she said. According to First Advantage, during January-March 2015, at least 8% of total candidates in New Delhi and 6% of Mumbai candidates it verified for companies had discrepancies in their academic records.
Krishnan said any attempt by the government to create a repository of information will “eliminate the risk of fraud to a large extent”.
The first government official cited above said there is a growing demand for verification of educational qualifications, and an Aadhaar-linked system will lead to the reduction of fraud.
Experts say that before the government goes public on such a move, it needs to ensure that the data storage is foolproof and issues of privacy are addressed.
“Privacy in India is certainly a concern and when you allow an employer to verify data, the authorities have to ensure that privacy of a student or job seeker is protected,” said Kalpesh Banker, managing partner of EduShine Advisory, an education consultancy. “If the question is, ‘Is the concept is good?’, then the answer is definitely yes.”
