New education council recommemded

Updated on: Friday, April 10, 2009

In the last few weeks, the focus in education circles has been on Prof Yash Pal’s recommendation for the creation of a new National Higher Education Council. According to Yash Pal, who is former chairman of UGC, this would replace existing regulators such as University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Medical Council of India (MCI) and Dental Council of India (DCI).

One of the grounds of his argument for founding the new body is to create greater autonomy from government and executive influence in serious academic decisions that impact millions in the country. Most educators have predictably supported the call for forming the Commission mainly to foster excellence in the crucial nation-building sector of human resource development. The educationists are also worried by indiscriminate and lop-sided growth of unaided professional colleges and the mass conversion of colleges in to deemed-to-be-universities under section 3 of UGC Act 1956.

The Yash Pal committee has pointed to the ‘pull’ factors for these colleges to convert themselves into degree granting institutions – independence to open new courses of study and to fix a fee structure as they wish. But sadly, there is not much talk about the ‘Push’ factors that has led to this challenge. Nearly three years ago, senior academic and former vice chancellor of Anna University and the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), Prof. V.C. Kulandaiswamy, wrote a book that essentially set out the contours that Indian Higher Education needs to take to become globally acceptable and compatible. There he had, in the strongest possible criticism till date, called the present affiliation system as outdated.

One solution he called for is to convert many high ranking colleges into the status of a degree granting institution in a fixed time frame. Similarly, this time horizon would be used to assess the stability of those institutions that do not make the grade.

They should be downgraded as polytechnics or lower level institutions that offer skill based courses, like community colleges in the U.S. Several more academics have long criticized the fact that India’s Universities were under the thumbs of the politicians and the executive. Vice Chancellor appointments even in government university systems were done to meet vested interests. Even well-meaning academics are unable to bring in or enforce rapid changes in the curriculum, or teaching - learning systems or students’ training in line with economic, social and scientific advances of the day.

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New education council recommemded

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