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PM’s Emphasis to Expand Higher Education Facilities in the Country
Search 14th October 2017 here http://www.newsonair.com/Main_Audio_Bulletins_Search.aspx
TOPIC: General Studies 2
- Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
- Development processes and the development industry the role of NGOs, SHGs, various groups and associations
Recently, centenary celebration of Patna University, one of the oldest university of India, took place. 100 years life of a University is a very important milestone for any higher education institute. Patna University became quite an important academic place as it was supposed to be Oxford of East at the time it was set up and slowly it became a great centre of learning. During the celebrations, PM reinstated focus on the importance of higher education and requirement of creating world class universities in India. The 11th Five Year Plan made provisions for improving the quality of higher education in the country. India has over 700 Universities (including 48 Central Universities), 16 IITs, 30 NIITs and around 36,000 Degree colleges. Nearly 2 crore students participate in informal and tertiary education. Despite these numbers, international education rating agencies have not placed any of these institutions within the best 100 of the world.
It is the time to improve higher education not only in Bihar but in the entire country. The government has announced that the top 10 private and top 10 public universities will be given Rs.10,000 crores in the next 5 years. This means that 20 universities will be given 10,000 crores in the next 5 years which is a huge sum and all the universities can compete for excellence to receive such funding. This step is to arrest the brain drain and encourage innovation.
Improvement areas
For this, the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) is set to take off soon which will boost infrastructure, especially state-of-the-art laboratories, in key institutions.
Another project called Vishwajeet is being initiated to improve the position of Indian educational institutions in global rankings such as QS and Times. It is widely known that not much emphasis is paid on the quality research. Also availability of funds for carrying out research in several areas be it economy, humanities or science, linguistics or acarology main areas are lagging behind. When there is funding as well as motivation to do research in diverse areas, Indian universities have the potential to be part of top 100 universities of world.
Thus, there is a need to develop higher education with public private partnership as the Asian University and East Asian universities have such institutions running with public private partnership between industry and education.
Competitors and India
In the recent years some of the Chinese Universities and East Asia Universities have entered in the top 100 list. India’s population has a low 10% access to higher education while China has 22% enrolment and 28% enrolment in the US. Since the early 1990s, China’s post-secondary enrolments grew from 5 million to 27 million, while India’s expanded from 5 million to just 13 million.
Conclusion
India should have 20 centres of learning of excellence where scientific research will be taken up and then the spillover effect will lead to improvement of quality education in the entire country. The fruit of research once can’t be restricted to the educated only. Attention has to be paid to the research work where the life of the common people will be elevated. For such an impact and effect, research areas have to work with technology as it is a way of liberation
The New India or make in India makes lot of emphasis on innovation whereby there is focus on innovating for the country’s own peculiar needs rather than adopting model from abroad.
Appropriate technology will improve means to ease for livelihood through important segment of research. New ideas, criticism and also the innovation that are coming should be welcomed. They should be experimented and through that, create a perfection in technology.
The need for expansion of primary, higher and tertiary education facilities in the country so as to enhance opportunities of employment for younger generation is now a critical segment for development of India. Higher education has the potential to enhance productivity and economic value both at the individual and national levels.
Also Read
Twenty world- class “Institutions of Eminence” to be established
Connecting the dots:
- Higher education is not only about allocating funds but about implementing appropriate policy decisions. Do you agree? Discuss.
