Websites of many Bihar universities replete with spelling howlers

PATNA: If one visits the websites of different universities in Bihar, it becomes evident that language teaching has taken a back seat in educational institutes. Even the opening pages of the sites contain messages replete with howlers.
The website of Bhupendra Narayan Mandal University in Madhepura describes Mandal, after whom the university is named, as “grass root label social worker” and states that the university is “known for adding glory to the educational atmosphere of this district and it’s surrounding”.
As depicted on its website, Jai Prakash University in Chhapra was established to “serve the needs of higher and quality education for the people of Saran commisionary”.
Another university of north Bihar figures as “Purnea University, Purnia” on its website. It states that the university “is formed to cater to the needs of higher education” and “committed to be a world-class excellence in education”.
While the word ‘academic calendar’ is spelt as “academic calender” on Lalit Narayan Mithila University’s site, the vice-chancellor’s message on the website of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University reads, “My heartiest congratulations to all the Department of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University, Muzaffarpur and its dedicated faculty, staff and students. I wish all of them a huge success in their endeavour”.
Similarly, the website of Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University (TMBU) states that it is “a public university sprawled within 264 acres of lush green campus”.
These are only few examples to show how casually the websites are being taken so far as the language of the content is concerned. And that too, at a time when the websites of all the universities are being looked into by hundreds and thousands of students and faculty members every day for downloading e-content prepared and uploaded by subject teachers.
Needless to say, the content displayed on the websites must have passed through all the senior officials and academics of the universities concerned. “The VCs, pro-VCs, deans of faculties and heads of postgraduate departments are supposed to be highly qualified and should possess the basic understanding of language,” said Sahitya Akademi winner and retired Patna University professor of English, Arun Kamal.
Expressing his grave concern over the deteriorating standard of language teaching in schools and colleges in recent decades, Kamal pointed out that many teachers could not write correct English or Hindi owing to their poor knowledge of language. That’s why, in a recent advertisement issued by the registrar of Munger University, the term ‘Career Advancement Scheme’ was spelt as ‘Carrier Advancement Scheme’. He suggested that each university should have a team of academics well-versed in English or Hindi to monitor the language of the content being uploaded to the websites.
Sometime back this newspaper had highlighted how the pro-VC of a state university had misspelt even common words while disposing of the office files. He had spelt the word ‘backlog’ as ‘back lock’, ‘constituted’ as ‘constitued’, and ‘registrar’ as ‘registar’. Similarly, ‘suggestion’ was written as ‘suggesein’, ‘opinion’ as ‘opinian’ and ‘governor’as ‘governer’.
Former BPSC member Shiv Jatan Thakur recalled how, in 2004, the-then governor of Bihar, M Rama Jois, had asked TMBU to cancel the second class degree of Tribhuvan University (Nepal) English teacher Amar Nath Tiwary for writing a petition “full of grammatical errors”.
“The present governor must ensure the selection of only well-qualified academics as the VCs and pro-VCs of different universities in future,” he said.