Karnataka   

Call for national debate on higher education

HUBLI: All India Federation of University and College Teachers’ Organisation (AIFUCTO) has welcomed the major recommendations of the national conference on development of higher education held in New Delhi recently.

In a release issued here, Professor Thomas Joseph, President, Dr. V.K. Tewari, General Secretary and L.R. Angadi, Zonal Secretary of AIFUCTO said that the consensus view emerging from the national conference of vice-chancellors was a rejection of the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) and reiteration of the views expressed by the committees consulted by the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) on financing and autonomy of higher education institutions.

The national level policy divide on higher education, as reflected through the divergent perceptions of the NKC and University Grants Commission recommendations, called for a fresh national debate on the strategies for the development of higher education, they said.

“While both NKC and UGC swear by the triple objectives of expansion, inclusion and excellence, their views diverge on the synergies among these objectives. While the National Knowledge Commission recommends expansion and excellence at the expense of equity and inclusion, University Grants Commission says that the objectives of expansion, inclusion and excellence are integral and complementary to one another,” they said in the release.

The University Grants Commission-organised conference had pointed out the need for a different strategy for development, which should focus more on uplifting average universities and colleges with the objective of reducing the quality gap among higher education institutions, rather than developing few islands of excellence.

Since the conference had also rejected National Knowledge Commission recommendations on the creation of a new national regulatory framework by establishing an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education and other recommendations, AIFUCTO urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had endorsed the report of the NKC earlier, to clarify his stand.

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