Reforming higher education institutions

Why in news?

Recently union government has announced a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore for 20 institutions of excellence in higher education.

What is the plan on higher education institutions?

• Out of 20 institutions of excellence in higher education 10 each in the public and private space.
• Such institutions will be given greater autonomy to decide on their affairs, as has been done in the case of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).
• This is planned over the next five years, by this measures like granting central status to universities will be a thing of the past.

What is the actual status of Indian higher education?

• India has the largest number of higher education institutions in the world an astounding 33,723.
• It has a very high levels of enrolments in higher education, but the situation is just the reverse in terms of actual outcomes.
• A large number of educational institutes has little credibility in terms of the quality of education they impart and churn out degrees that have little value.
• According to a survey 80% of the more than 100,000 engineering students that graduate each year are unemployable.

How public institutions are affected by government moves?

• A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education found that the total vacancies in Central universities were 53% of the sanctioned positions of professors.
• Many of the state universities do not hire regular faculty and make do with poorly paid part-time teachers for lack of funds.
• At many instances government had its heavy-handed treatment dealing with internal university matters.
• This has also reflected in the poor standing of Indian higher education institutes in any established global ranking.

Source: Business standard