On Monday, the Calcutta University inaugurated an Administrative Staff College to train its administrators and officials in response to the recent announcement by the ministry of human resource development that a central university of international standards would be set up in Kolkata.

"We have to compete with this world-class university which will have more funds at its disposal," said Pro Vice-Chancellor Surnajan Das. The University Grants Commission has sanctioned a sum of Rs 1 crore for the CU's latest administrative staff college. During a recent visit by a team of UGC officials, the employees of the university urged the former to train its administrative staff. In response, the UGC decided to allot a fund for setting up the college.

Most of the training programmes are aimed at students and teachers but for the first time any effort has been made to improve the standards of the employees and administrators.

The Vice-Chancellor of the University, Asis Kumar Banerjee, said that now the focus would be on upgrading the Human Resource and Development department as well as external infrastructure. Besides having a good knowledge of computers, employees should be able to communicate in English.