A TREASUREHOUSE OPENED: The Secretary, Union Department of Secondary and Higher Education, B.S. Baswan, inaugurating a digital library at the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore on Thursday. The Director of the CIIL, Udaya Narayana Singh, is seen. — Photo: M.R. Sriram

MYSORE: The Secretary, Union Department of Secondary and Higher Education, B.S. Baswan, said on Thursday that a Bill to regulate admissions and fee structure will be introduced in Parliament before the end of this academic year.

Addressing presspersons here, he said the Centre had sought some time from the Supreme Court to draft a law to regulate admissions and fee structure in private professional colleges.

While the Bill will be presented before the end of this academic year, Central legislation will be put in place before the commencement of the next academic year, he added.

He said: "The process of consultation on the draft Bill has commenced, and the draft will be circulated among all the stakeholders of higher education, including the State Government and managements of private professional colleges."

Working groups

Mr. Baswan said working groups have been formed by Council Advisory Board for education to study various issues involved in admissions and fee structure, and these groups are likely to submit their findings by the middle of this month. Once the reports are submitted, a detailed discussion will take place before the draft is introduced in Parliament, he added.

Stating that a national consensus on the admission and fee structure in professional courses must evolve, he said the legislation will give adequate flexibility to suit the respective needs of the States.

Market forces

Mr. Baswan said managements of private professional college will be involved in discussions and consultations before the draft is introduced in Parliament. When market forces are very strong, the State can do very little. The Government cannot ignore when it enacts a law, he added.

Regarding the high fee structure demanded by professional colleges, Mr. Baswan said: "When there are two willing parties in a transaction, the State cannot do much." He also said that one cannot expect people to set up educational institutions ignoring the market demands, and that investments require returns.

Focus on academics

Mr. Baswan said the Centre is considering revamping its education policies as the interest in academics is on a decline.

He was speaking at Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) here after inaugurating the digital library of the institute and its regional language centres. He said it has been noticed that many youngsters have no interest in taking up academics, and that the preference to academic pursuits is on a decline. There is a need to have a re-look at policies and address the problems plaguing the academics, he added. Regarding government funding for institutions, Mr. Baswan said that though the Government will support the initiatives of educational and research institutions, they cannot depend solely on it. Some institutions in the country have the capacity to generate funds on their own, he added.

Sharada, who is in-charge of the digital library project, said the CIIL will take up digitisation of other libraries and network them for resource sharing. The future plans include digitising the collection with copyright permission and digitising material other than books.

The Director of the CIIL, Udaya Narayana Singh, and the Assistant Director, I.S. Borkar, were present.

Digital library

The digital library launched at the CIIL is a computerised system that allows users to obtain coherent means of access to an organised, electronically stored repository of information. The collection in the digital library exceeds two lakh books and other material. More than 60 per cent of the books are in Indian languages.

Though it is at present accessible to CIIL and regional language centres, educational institutions can be hooked to the site for accessing information.

Language centres

While the library of CIIL has English and Hindi books, the seven regional language centres at Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Lucknow, Mysore, Patiala, Pune and Solan have books collected from the respective regions.

Besides books and journals, the digitised information contains theses and dissertations, gramophone records, cassettes, films and micrographic material.

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