Following is from the PIB release http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=31853.
The University Grants Commission organised a two day National Conference on Development of Higher Education on 10th and 11th October,2007 at New Delhi. The two day National Conference was attended by Vice Chancellors of Central, State, Deemed Universities and other eminent educationists. Six technical sessions were held on the themes of (i) Access and Expansion (ii)Equity & Inclusion (iii) Quality & Excellence (iv) Private Participation in Higher Education and Internationalization (v) Academic and Administrative Reforms (vi) Financing and Funding Mechanism. Following is a summary of the recommendations made by the participants of the National Conference.
1. There was a consensus that the triple objective of Expansion, Inclusion and Excellence are integral and complementary to one another and must be seen as three dimensions of the same problem and issues related to them will have to be addressed simultaneously and with due deference to one another.
2. It was agreed that access to higher education has to be increased to 20-25 percent and that the target GER of 15 by the end of the 11th plan appears reasonable. The participants agreed with the two-pronged strategy of establishment of new institutions and also capacity enhancement of existing institutions. They however emphasised that this should be done with due regard to the social and market relevance and changing preference of students and that the focus of expansion should be on inclusion and excellence and an approach that is expedient.
a. Capacity addition in existing instituions
b. Focus on smaller towns, rural and remote areas and backward regions where GER is lower than the national average;
c. A women university in each state
d. Established universities to set up rural campuses
e. Priority to professional and technical courses in public institutions;
f. Restructuring conventional courses
g. Focus on professional, technical and market-oriented courses must not be at the cost of humanities and social sciences.
h. Universities should not be reduced to skill-development centre; their focus should be intense engagements in intellectual activities;
i. Enrolment at the PG level across all disciplines need to be enhanced;
j. Universities and colleges to be of optimal size; conduct a study to decide;
3. Rationalise the affiliating system: reduce the number of colleges per university; make affiliation more effective; autonomy to bigger and better colleges; UG examination board within the university;
4. It was insisted upon that the strategies for expansion as outlined in these conference must not rely upon the private sector alone for this will adversely impinge upon the goal of equity and inclusion. Thus public investment in higher education has to be increased substantially;
5. It was reiterated time and again that mere expansion in institutions and intake capacity shall not necessarily make higher education inclusive. This will require an proactive approach and strategies for removing the regional and social imbalances. The participants agreed with the approach and strategies suggested by the UGC and also with the recommendations of the regional conferences:
a. New universities and colleges in areas that have GER lower than the national average;
b. Strengthen and expand existing universities and colleges that are located in areas that have GER lower than the national average;
c. Special assistance to institutions located in under-privileged regions/areas and also to those that have higher proportion of such social groups as SCs, STs, OBCs, Minorities, Girls, Physically Challenged in their student and staff population;
d. Establishment of equal opportunity office in each university;
e. Capacity building centres for students from the deprived social groups;
6. It was emphasised that the strategies for inclusion must also include the physically challenged – departments of disability studies;
7. Focus will also be on school education;
8. Better endowed and privileged universities and colleges need to network with under-privileged institutions located in rural and remote areas and thus offer the opportunity of providing the best talents and technology to the rural, backward and deprived institutions;
9. Regarding excellence in higher education will have to focus on Infrastructure, physical facilities and human resources particularly teachers;
10. The national conference is in agreement with the strategies suggested by the UGC and the recommendations of the regional conferences;
a. Bring the non-12b colleges & universities under the ugc fold – on matching grant basis;
b. Priority funding for bringing B and C band universities at the level of A band universities;
c. Faculty development through fellowships and FIP
11. Much depends upon the availability of quality teaching faculty but for which quality of higher education shall not improve;
12. State governments to accord priority to higher education – Remove ban on creation of faculty positions and appointment
a. Nurturing Talents and Promoting Quality Faculty: Teaching Staff: Special and urgent efforts are needed in attracting and retaining the best available talents as faculty members in higher education. Autonomy with responsibility, performance based incentives, revisit the compensation and rewards;
b. Rigour in faculty selection, PhD admission on merit and through rigorus selection process; faculty development;
c. Student evaluation and feedback of courses and faculty should be introduced and these should be used for incentivising faculty members;
d. Financial assistance to universities and colleges for International faculty exchange, Inter-institutional faculty exchange within the country and also for faculty exchange between industry and academic institutions;
13. On the issue of academic and administrative reforms the conference is in agreement with the recommendations of the regional conferences on updating of curricula, examination and evaluation system, semester and credit based courses, inter-institutional mobility of students;
14. The process of reforms has already been delayed for long and every possible efforts should be made to put them into practice. The leadership of the university should take the initiative and must exert their authority to ensure that these are implemented urgently;
15. It was indicated that Infrastructural constraints particularly inadequate faculty is the biggest constraint in the implementation of these reforms;
16. Higher education must protect its autonomy and the most effective way of doing the same lies in behaving with responsibility. Autonomy with accountability, therefore, has to be the guiding principle. The higher education fraternity must work hard and excel in their pursuits to command respect. The higher education system needs to protect its autonomy and in no circumstances the universities should allow the external forces to control the contents of higher education.
17. Multiplicity of regulatory authorities is a concerns encroaching upon the university autonomy and creates confusion. It is suggested that:
§ The UGC should be the sole regulatory authority for universities and that other regulatory authorities should respect the autonomy of these institutions and should play only an advisory role.
§ The mandates of other regulatory authorities – the AICTE, NCTE, etc should be confined to colleges offering professional and technical courses and private and self financed non-affiliated institutions only;
§ As medical and agricultural universities and colleges are funded by separate administrative Ministries, the MCI and ICAR should continue to regulate the medical and agricultural education in universities and colleges;
§ Other regulatory authorities should consult and involve the university concerned in their approval and accreditation process of affiliated institutions;
§ Governance and Decision making process:
o size and composition of decision making bodies.
o Decentralisation
o Departmental autonomy
o Leadership in universities plays vital role in promoting quality and excellence in higher education. Thus The Vice Chancellors should be appointed
§ on merit proven administrative administrative capabilities;
§ by search committee comprising of people of repute and other external forces should not be allowed to play part in the selection of vice chancellors’
As regards internationalisation, participants agreed with the recommendations of the regional conference. Watchword has been that it must not adversely impinge on the goal of equity and quality. Strongly regulatory mechanism for the foreign universities was suggested;
So was the case with the issues concerning private participation in higher education. Even the private and self financed universities were in agreement that these universities should be guided by the principles of equity and justice and commitment for providing quality higher education; A strong regulatory framework was suggested for the purpose;
The crisis in higher education is not as much due to lack of resources as it is of priorities. Unless higher education appears high on the priority of the union and state governments, the resource constraints shall continue to remain;
Cost recovery from students is already very high in the range of 40 – 50% and the scope of raising fees may be limited.
October 11th, 2007
Update: One thing new in this is the proposal to establish 10 new NITs.
From http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=31735.
Access, Equity and Quality are focus of new initiatives in Higher Education as per the meeting of the Consultative Committee relating to the Ministry of Human Resource Development which took place earlier today. The meeting chaired by Shri Arjun Singh, Minister for HRD, discussed new initiatives for the 11th Plan in the higher education sector. The Minister for HRD briefed the members on the proposals from the Ministry that had been discussed in the Full Meeting of the Planning Commission. Shri Singh mentioned that the proposed initiatives would not be ready for implementation till the formal approvals of the Planning Commission and the National Development Council (NDC). Members were also informed that while the 10th Plan outlay for higher education, including technical education was approximately Rs.9500 crores, the Ministry was hopeful of getting an outlay several times higher for its Central Plan proposals.
The 11th Plan objectives are aimed at increasing the Gross Enrolment Ratio(GER) (access rate) in higher education from the present 10% to 15% by 2012, while ensuring improvement in quality and enhancement of equity. Acknowledging that States’ share in Plan outlay being roughly four times the Central plan outlay, co-opting States to contribute substantially would be critical to the achievement of the Plan objectives. The Ministry’s proposal for the 11th Plan accordingly include incentives to States to allocate higher resources to colleges and universities, partial assistance to setting up of colleges of excellence in as many as 370 districts with low GER and less than four colleges per one lakh of population, special assistance for institutions in 88 minority concentration districts, substantially higher allocation for establishing women’s hostels in order to rectify gender bias in enrolment, removal of regional imbalances through the establishment of 30 new central universities – sixteen of which would be in States which have no Central University at present.
Members were informed that the Central Government has already approached the State Governments to suggest alternative locations in regard to the new Central Universities and the Ministry in consultation with the Planning Commission and the UGC was in the process of working out the concept of world ‘class universities’. The proposals include higher level of assistance to State universities and colleges and also assistance from the UGC to the nearly 150 State universities and 6000 colleges which are not being assisted at present, in order to plug the quality gaps identified by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). The Committee was also apprised of other new institutions proposed to be created such as the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University for which a Bill has already been introduced in Parliament, the proposed Workers’ Technical University, introduction of Medical & Engineering Faculties in all Central Universities, the proposed Inter-University Centre for Policy Research in Higher Education, the proposed new Indian Institutes of Technology, the proposed new Indian Institutes of Science Education & Research and Research, Schools of Planning & Architecture, etc..
New initiatives in Technical Education include expansion and upgradation of 200 State Technical Institutions selected on the basis of appropriate criteria; expansion of centrally funded institutions (IITs, IIMs, NIITs, IIITs and NITTTRs (as per Oversight Committee recommendations for inclusion, expansion and excellence); strengthening departments/institutes of management and business administration in university system in view of increased demand for MBAs and limitations of IIMs to expand capacity and also affordability and setting up of new institutions in the XIth Plan (Eight IITs, Seven IIMs, Five IISERs, Two SPAs, 10 NITs, 20 IIITs, and 50 Centres for Training and Research in frontier areas) and also consider the feasibility of increasing the capacities of the existing IITs and IIMs by 200% or so.
Polytechnic education aims to create a pool of skilled manpower to support shop floor and field operations. It is proposed to give a big boost to Polytechnics whose present intake capacity is only about 2.5 lakhs as against 6 lakhs for degree level engineering courses. Ideally, there should be an intake capacity of over 20 lakhs in Diploma courses, even on a conservative basis, for 6 lakh Engineers. Therefore, subject to availability of funds, the Ministry is proposing that the XI Plan must aim to start at least about 1000 new Polytechnics (300 by State Governments, 300 in PPP mode and 400 by Private sector) which will result in the addition of about 2 lakh seats.
Regarding Open and Distance Learning, the Committee was informed that under the National Education Mission Government intends through ICT, to interconnect through Broad Band, all Institutions of national importance/excellence, over 375 universities and about 18600 colleges besides providing them specially generated e-learning material. For example, the e-content for over 150 courses prepared by National Project for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) through the IITs and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, is already available to all the Institutions free of cost.
While complimenting the Government for these initiatives, members expressed the view that allocation of 6% of the GDP for the education sector was essential to implement these initiatives for which the State Governments would also have to be appropriately encouraged. Several innovative suggestions were also given by members; including the need to popularize ‘earn while you learn schemes,’ removal of disparity in quality between colleges in urban and rural areas, the need for the UGC to review its system of recognition for financial assistance so that more colleges could become eligible, optimum utilization of physical infrastructure through encouragement to evening colleges and working in shifts so as to increase the capacity of intake, need for improving teaching methodology in undergraduate courses in Arts and Sciences through use of multimedia and new pedagogical tools, etc.
Shri Chinta Mohan, Shri Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, Shri Rajendrasinh G. Rana, Dr. Vallabhbhai Kathiria, Km. Bhavana P. Gawali, Shri Haribhau Jawale and Shri Babulal Marandi from Lok Sabha and Shri Raashid Alvi, Prof. P.J. Kurien, Ms. Kanimozhi, Shri Krishna Lal Balmiki and Dr. Ram Prakash from Rajya Sabha attended the meeting.
October 8th, 2007
Appeal to the readers: Please write to the CMO at cmo@ori.nic.in with cc to Industry Secretary indsec@ori.nic.in.
Following is an excerpt from a report in Pioneer. Tathya.in also reports on this.
It now seems abundantly clear that Orissa is going to miss an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) for the second time. While one after another State is receiving the green signal from the Centre for an IIT, Orissa continues to lag behind.
The Centre on Tuesday announced that it would open a Central university and an IIT in Himachal Pradesh. "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told me to announce a Central university and an IIT," said Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram at Shimla. The announcements come ahead of the Assembly elections in that State due in February next.
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh said opening up of a Central university and an Institute of Technology (IIT) would boost the educational standards in his hill State.
Earlier, in the last week of August, Virbhadra Singh had presented a memorandum to set up a Central university and an IIT in Himachal Pradesh to the Minister of Human Resource Development and the Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister had announced on August 15 that there would be eight new IITs in the country.
After Manmohan Singh’s announcement, at least Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana approached him to set up IITs in their respective States. Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is yet to finalise whether to ask for up-gradation of an existing engineering college to an IIT or to go in for a new IIT, said sources.
… Unless the Orissa Government takes an early decision, the State will miss the IIT bus once again, said an IITian. And this would seal the fate of the State so far receiving a new Institute of Technology (IIT) in future, he added.
October 4th, 2007
