The Hindu : National : 30 new universities to expand access to quality education

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Monday, Jun 25, 2007
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30 new universities to expand access to quality education

Special Correspondent

Quantum jump has to be well planned: Prime Minister

MUMBAI:

MUMBAI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced here on Friday that the Union Government had initiated measures to set up 30 new Central universities, a landmark in expanding access to high quality education.

Dr. Singh said that these universities should focus on achieving international standards of excellence and be rated amongst the top institutions in the world.

“They would have the best faculty, excellent physical resources, a wide range of disciplines and most importantly, a diverse student body,” he told the closing ceremony of the University of Mumbai’s sesquicentennial celebrations, a yearlong programme to mark 150 years of the university.

He said the Government was also working on a programme for having 6,000 quality schools, one in each block of the country, which would establish benchmarks for excellence in public schooling for the rest of the education system.

“We are at an important cusp in our developmental trajectory, at a point when the dynamics of our population growth can catapult us into a prolonged cycle of rapid economic growth which can be the basis for eradication of the ancient scourges of poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and disease,” he added.

But for this to happen, the country needed to translate the human potential into reality, he said.

The HRD Ministry, the University Grants Commission and the Planning Commission were working to operationalise the new universities in the next two to three months.

This is in deference to the recommendation of the National Knowledge Commission calling for massive expansion of higher education.

The Prime Minister said that the Commission believed that by 2015, India should attain a gross enrolment ratio of at least 15 per cent “if we were to be in line with most modern societies. But such a quantum jump in our university system had to be well planned and well funded.”

At present around 10 per cent of the relevant age-group in the country gets enrolled in any institute of higher education as compared 40 to 50 per cent in most developed economies, he said.

“In almost half the districts in the country, higher education enrolments are abysmally low, almost two-third of our universities and 90 per cent of our colleges are rated as below average on quality parameters and a nagging fear is that university curricula are not synchronised with employment needs,” he said.

The Prime Minister was unhappy with the way the universities were run.

“I am concerned that in many states university appointments, including that of vice-chancellors, have been politicised and have become subject to caste and communal considerations, there are complaints of favouritism and corruption”.

He called for freeing university appointments from unnecessary interventions on the part of governments, and promotion of autonomy and accountability.

Better interaction

Maharashtra Governor and Chancellor of the University, S.M. Krishna, called for better interaction between the university and industry to improve the employability of the graduates coming out of the campus.

Vice-Chancellor of the University Vijay Khole, Union Petroleum Minister Murali Deora and Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh also addressed the gathering.

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