HRD Ministry to renew focus on higher education in the 11th plan

Oct 11: India has been a prime learning centre but now the present education system has been criticised for not giving importance to overall development of personality and creativity.

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The present system laid its emphasis on securing more marks. Every year many students commit suicide due to failure or low score in the examination. Many students go to depression even if they go abroad for higher studies as they fail to cope up with the education system.

The education in India is suffering for many other reasons, the corruption, ragging and reservation system are few that has kept the universalisation of education at a bay.

The change in education system should be welcomed and to address the major concern related to education, Arjun Singh, Union Human Resource Development Minister inaugurated a national conference of Vice-Chancellors on ‘Development of Higher Education: Expansion, Inclusion and Excellence’ in Delhi on Wednesday.

He said “Higher education has become a sick child of education. It is not serving the cause of the young people of India. The academic world needs to come to terms with today's reality and the 11th Plan gives us enough elbow room to experiment".

He advocated the strong need of giving a new direction to higher education as it has failed to serve the very purpose of education.

He urged the Vice-Chancellors to find a way out of the prevailing situation.

He added "As vice-chancellors, you have the opportunity and duty to find a way out for it. To prescribe is not my ideology. Let us now inscribe. Give the country a roadmap of higher education. Keeping the divide in view, you should define what should be the content, extent, methodology and basic ingredients of higher education”.



Member of Planning Commission Prof Balchandra Mungekar in a similar concern said “Between 1857 and 1986, we have presided over a failed education system. The general education system has been divorced from the Indian reality. It is now time to redraft the entire curricula".



"Today, not more than 9-10% graduates are employable. There is a totally diverse economic and social reality. The task is to drastically restructure the education system," he added.



He said that the allowance in education would be increased from 5% of GDP by the end of the 11 th five year plan and will be increased to 6 % subsequently in the next five year plan.

He added that government is planning to revise the fee structure and stressed that the student from public school should pay the same amount in colleges that they used to pay in schools.

Switching over to the semester system from the prevailing annual examination mode was also suggested.

Later, Sukhdeo Thorat Chairman of UGC summarises the recommendations of Vice Chancellor and said that they are not against giving entry to foreign universities provided that their must be some safeguard to protect the universities from unwarranted competition.

The other recommendation were to have a effective regulatory mechanism to monitor admission and fees in private institutions, and giving land at subsidised rate to private institution with a condition that they should provide education free of cost to the socially and economically backward people.