Perceiving a substantive increase of students in the higher education sector in the next seven years, the HRD Ministry has decided to fund even private universities meeting certain norms of the UGC.
The funding by the Centre will be up to 90 per cent and it will be available to private institutions based on certain norms. There will be eligibility criteria for private universities and States to achieve a high and sustained impact of higher education through monitoring and evaluation of the entire system.
The scheme emphasises to promote reforms in the State Higher Education System by creating a facilitating institutional structure for planning and monitoring at the State level. It will help to promote autonomy in State universities and include governance in the institutions. The State Government and the Centre through the Project Appraisal Board will monitor the project annually.
HRD Ministry officials said that the scheme will be that central funding from the Ministry and UGC to institution will be through the State Council of Higher Education as against the direct funding by the Centre and UGC to educational institutions of higher education presently.
“The main component of the programme is to set up new universities and upgrade the existing autonomous colleges to universities. The other attempt will be to convert colleges to Cluster Universities and set up new Model Colleges. The strategy will also include converting existing Degree colleges to Model Colleges,” said a HRD Ministry official.
HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju said collective effort should be made to raise standard of higher education and increase employability. “Research should be given more priority in the context of higher education,” Raju said following a Consultative Committee meeting of the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) on Thursday. RUSA will increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) from 18 percent to 30 per cent with an estimated cost of `99,000 crore.
Other related points that came up for discussion were expanding the institutional base by creating additional capacity in existing institutions and establishing new institutions in order to achieve enrolment targets; correcting regional imbalances in access to higher education by facilitating access to high quality institutions in urban and semi-urban areas creating opportunities for students from rural areas to get better access to better quality institutions; and improving equity in higher education by providing adequate opportunities of higher education to SC/STs and socially and educationally backward classes.