University proposes to digitise past 100 years’ degree certificates

This would immensely help those students, who go abroad for higher studies or employment process, during the scrutiny of genuineness of their certificates. 

Conveying this in his graduation day address at Annai Veilankanni’s College for Women in the city, S Thirumagan, controller of examination, University of Madras, said that the university had been preserving examination records of lakhs of students, including university departments and its affiliated colleges for several decades.

“When the university receives request for checking the genuineness of a student’s marksheet and degree certificate, the staff have to manually search for the records, which takes a considerable amount of time. At present, the minimum time taken to complete the verification process is around 10 days as the staff have to manually check the records whereas with digitisation the entire work can be completed mostly in a day,” Dr Thirumagan said.

Pointing out that the university received 200 applications every day for genuineness, the controller of examination said that 50 per cent of these applications were from foreign embassies. 

“We will place the proposal before the syndicate and Senate for approval. Once it is given the nod, the work will be commenced shortly,” he said. 

At present those who apply for genuineness certificate submit their requisition with a demand draft for the requisite fee, whereas when the digitisation is completed they could pay the fee online and get genuineness certificate within one day, Dr Thirumagan said.