Allow varsities to hire foreign faculty: Montek

Updated on: Saturday, November 12, 2011

The Plan panel supported changing laws to allow varsities to hire foreign faculty and said it is aiming an increase in enrollment ratio in higher education to 30 per cent in the next 15 years.

"Indian universities must have an international flavour, international students, international staff. This would not happen unless the government removes the restriction on employment of international faculty.

"Unless this is changed it will be difficult to make it to the top grade," he said.

Under the existing rules, Indian universities are not allowed to recruit foreign faculty.

The challenge before planners, policy makers and educationists, both in the public and the private sector, is of producing the world class Indian universities that could be counted among the top 200 rating list, he said.

"In the next 20 years we must see a significant number of educational institutions in that category," he said.

He said the 12th Plan Approach Paper has laid special emphasis in making primary education more widespread and higher education more research-based.

Ahluwalia added that expansion of higher education has to be balanced with equality of access, especially for those living in areas where educational institutes do not exist.

"For higher education, the 12th Plan objective is expansion, equality of access and excellence," Ahluwalia said.

"The objective is to raise the enrollment ratio in higher education from the current level of 15 per cent to 30 per cent over the next 15 years," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said while addressing the FICCI Higher Education Summit 2011 here.

Allow varsities to hire foreign faculty: Montek

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