Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday rued the fact that even 60 years after UGC’s birth, the “best is yet to come” in the higher education sector. The Prime Minister also noted that premier institutions of the country do not figure among the best in the world and that quality in general remains a “huge concern in the higher education sector”.
Addressing the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of the University Grants Commission (UGC), the Prime Minister also pointed that faculty crunch have been impacting the quality of higher education in the country. “The UGC and other stakeholders should urgently consider the issue and find innovative methods of resolving it,” Singh, who chaired the Commission in 1991 as an academician said in his speech. Present on the occasion were HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju, MoS HRD Shashi Tharoor and Jitin Prasad and top HRD and UGC officials.
Drawing attention towards financing higher education, Singh said new models of financing higher education based on well established norms and improvements in the existing system of funding by Centre and the states are of “critical concerns” as support has declined in real terms. “State universities in particular require focused attention and support to improve their quality of teaching and research,” he said.
PM said the recently launched Rashtriya Uchttar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) programme recognises the importance of state higher education institutes which cater to a majority of the students receiving higher education in our country. The programme aims to create 278 new universities and 388 new colleges and convert 266 colleges to model degree colleges by the end of the 13th Plan Period.
He also stressed on an urgent need for strengthening the university-industry interface to give a boost to research and development as it would give immense benefit both to the university system and Indian Industry at large. He mentioned that in the coming years the country needs to increasingly focus on employability along with three other Es — expansion, excellence and equity.
leveraging on the potential if ICT, Singh said 400 universities and 20,000 colleges have been provided high speed broad-band connectivity while under the National Program on Technology Enhanced learning (NPTEl), web and video courses are being developed for engineering and humanities streams.