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Yechury for more investment in higher education sector

THALASSERY: Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury, MP, has underlined the importance of more government investment in the higher education sector to tap the country’s potential to be a knowledge powerhouse.

“Investments in higher education will be the backbone for the future potential of India becoming a knowledge powerhouse,” Mr. Yechury said while inaugurating a seminar on education organised here on Tuesday by the All Kerala Private College Teachers’ Association (AKPCTA) in connection with its golden jubilee.

Observing that higher education had been given big impetus after Independence, Mr. Yechury said that the education sector had then been driven by a vision that the country should achieve intellectual self-reliance matching economic self-reliance.

If there had been no State-funded educational institutions, the country could not have produced great leading lights such as Homi Bhabha, he said.

Only seven or eight per cent of students in the 17-23 age group were getting access to higher education today, though they formed 54 per cent of the total population. If India had to become a knowledge society, knowledge should become a property of the masses.

Today, the State was withdrawing from the higher education sector as a result of policies of globalisation India was pursuing.

Over the last 13 years, 12,000 private colleges had been started across the country, he said adding that if the reckless liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation in the education sector was not stopped, education would become a privilege of those who could afford to have it.

AKPCTA president A.P. Kuttikrishnan presided over the function. Economist Venkatesh Arthreya and social thinker Ninan Koshy were among those present.

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