A memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) and a private job assessment Web portal, signed on Thursday, has drawn the ire of students. For, under the agreement, the university will share with the firm the students’ personal details.
The MoU has been signed on the agreement that the portal will conduct free assessment for final-year students of 202 affiliated colleges. According to a release from VTU, it has entered into an MoU with HireMee in order to connect students with companies and bridge the gap between the Tier II and Tier III cities.
Sanjiv Kataria, advisor, HireMee, said VTU’s training and placement officers have been requested to share details of their graduating students with the company. Based on this, the company will connect with affiliated colleges to fix the dates for assessment tests. To do this, it will require the names of students, the programmes they are enrolled for, current scores and their class 10 and 12 scores, date of birth, email ID, phone numbers, and gender details. He said the details will be used to generate an email ID so that students can access the link to download the portal’s mobile application. Hall tickets for the assessment test will be dispatched thus.
H.N. Jagannath Reddy, Registrar, VTU, said the centralised placement cell would give the firm the details. He added that it was an optional test that students could choose whether to sit for or not.
The students and staff have taken exception to this and urged the university not to part with “confidential information”. “The university is taking a big risk by giving away the numbers of thousands of students. The company can use the contact details for their vested interests,” a faculty member of an engineering college in Bengaluru said.
A student said he was not happy with his grades being shared. “I do not want anyone to figure out what my grades are. We have given the university all our details with the confidence that they will not share [them] with a third party,” he said.