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Student researchers found guilty of plagiarism may lose their registration and teachers could lose their jobs as the HRD ministry approved new regulations on plagiarism drafted by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in New Delhi. In March this year, the UGC had approved the regulations prescribing graded punishment for plagiarism. In case the similarities are between 40% and 60%, students will be banned from submitting a revised paper for one year. A student's registration for a programme will be cancelled if the similarities are above 60%

The teacher-student ratio, a measure of quality of education, which is already abysmal at 1:21, is set to worsen after the discovery that nearly a tenth of teachers employed in higher education turned out to be ghost teachers. Around 130,000 teachers were found to be fake. India has about 1.4 million teachers in colleges and universities. While the good news is that this will lead to a focus on improving the quality of teaching, the bad news is that the country has just found out that understaffing in higher education institutes is far greater than what has been estimated so far.

The government plans to bring in a law to stop rampant plagiarism in academia, with punishment ranging from a warning to deregistration in the case of students and dismissal from service for teachers. Higher education regulator University Grants Commission (UGC) is finalising a draft law — the first of its kind — that is likely to be sent to the human resource development ministry for further action by June-end. Official sources said the government intends to seek parliamentary approval for the law this year itself.

Information related to students, teachers and schools will be a click away, from this academic year. The information will soon be available on a website hosted by the National Informatics Centre. The student database will help teachers and parents concentrate on learning levels. The online database will also be used to arrest the drop-out rate among students.