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Plan on Higher Education

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August 24, 2018

Why in news?

Union government is enabling regulatory architecture to emerge public and private institutions as world-class institutions.

What actions were taken by government in this regard?

  • In early 2017, the UGC approved the guidelines for creating 20 world-class institutions that were renamed “institutes of eminence” (IoE).
  • The outcome of the process that took more than two years was that out of over 900 universities, only six have the potential to become world-class universities.
  • In all, 114 institutions applied on the basis of a promise laid down in policies announced by the government.
  • The terms of references under which the Empowered Committee was tasked to identify universities were not made public.
  • The process of selecting the empowering universities was arbitrary.

What are the challenges involved?

  • Only three Indian universities featured in the top 250 in the QS World University Rankings 2018, while just 11 made it to top 700.
  • No Indian university features in the top 250 in the Times Higher Education World Rankings 2018 while only two have made it to the top 500.
  • This is because the key characteristics that are vital to any world-class university were missing from the exercise of selecting institutions.
  • This includes, for instance, internationalisation of faculty, research, students, courses and outlook
  • There seems to be a paralysis in India’s higher education system in not just policy, but also in procedure, planning and perspective.

What measures needs to be taken?

  • Universities take decades to evolve, attention should have been on empowering existing brown-field universities, rather than recognising non-existing universities as contenders.
  • Institution building is about a deeper recognition of what it takes to build a culture of excellence, thus Lived experiences of individuals matter more in universities than in any other organisation.
  • Even if there was a vision to recognise green-field institutions, there should have been a separate criteria and process to evaluate them.
  • The task for the Committee should have been to simply select from the existing pool of universities and empower them to compete internationally.
  • The Committee should have taken cognisance of the robust methodology that is used to rank institutions. Of course, research is of paramount importance.
  • Thus the selection process should have had a holistic approach to disciplines.

 

Source: Indian Express

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