Future generation will remember the tenure of the UPA Government as the darkest era of the country’s higher education sector, according to South India’s leading educationists, intellectuals and educational entrepreneurs. “The callousness and apathy of the Manmohan Singh Government has destroyed the country’s higher education sector,” charged G Viswanathan , president, Education Promotion Society of India, an apex body of the country’s educationists and intellectuals.
Addressing reporters at the end of a one-day conclave organised by EPSI in Chennai on Friday, Viswanathan, who is also the chancellor of the Vellore Institute of Technology said there was total uncertainty and chaos in the field of higher education. “The education system in the country is facing all round uncertainty. The present situation has come only because of the indifferent and irresponsible behaviour of the Union Government,” Viswanathan said.
“A Supreme Court order has made All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) redundant. It was the AICTE which was acting as a regulator of the country’s engineering and management degree courses. As on date there is a big vacuum in the area of engineering and management education,” he said.
Though the University Grants Commission has come out with the draft of a series of regulations, the educationists felt it was retrograde in nature, Viswanathan said. “According to the UGC proposal, all controlling authorities would be left with the universities to which the engineering and management colleges are affiliated. No other stake holders were consulted by the UGC while preparing the draft regulations,” he said.
He pointed out that educationists were unanimous in their view that the affiliation system itself destroys the quality of higher education. “There are more than 1,000 colleges affiliated to Usmania University while there are more than 500 colleges affiliated to Anna University in Chennai. How is it possible for a single university to regulate and monitor the quality of technical education in the country,” he asked.
The system of affiliation to universities was prevalent only in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. “All over the world, it is autonomous colleges and universities which determine the quality of education and teaching. We are still hanging around with the colonial mindset,” said Viswanathan.
The EPSI wants to make higher education, especially engineering and management education, accessible to all the needy and deserving sections at affordable costs. “The regulatory regime is making the sector inaccessible to the common man,” said A Gnanam, former AICTE member.