The HRD Secretary Ashok Thakur has said that higher education enrollment ratio in India is likely to grow to 30 per cent by 2020 because of increased investment in the sector and economic growth.
At an international conference on social science research on Saturday, Thakur said that the Government is encouraging engineering colleges, especially IITs, to offer more subjects in humanities so that students have access to social science subjects.
“Enrollment in higher education is likely to grow to 30 per cent by 2020 thanks to increased investment by the government and economic growth,” Thakur said at the valedictory
session of three day Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and International Development Research Center (IDRC)
conference.
Academic experts and policy makers from South, South East, and East Asian countries unanimously proposed formation of a social science research network acting as an
advocacy platform in the region to strengthen research and its funding.
“There is a need to build an interactive platform for research among the developing countries. Although there is a global edge of physical over social sciences, the questions of governance, social and economic tensions and other such concerns have remained under addressed in these nations,” said member secretary of ICSSR Ramesh Dadhich.
Chairman of Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Dr C Rangarajan, stressed on the important linkages between research and policy making. “There is need to increase our present savings of 5 per cent of GDP to 20 per cent of GDP and at the same time social problems need to be attended,” he said” Senior Program Officer, Think Tank Initiative, IDRC, Dr Samar Verma said through programs like Think Tank Initiative, the orgnisation are committed to partner in this endeavor of research councils.