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Reforms in Higher Education Strategy
Towards Global Knowledge Hub 2020
HIGHLIGHTS
- Education should aim at allowing the child to explore his interests
and provide channels to hone his skills in keeping with his aptitude
rather than stamping him as pass or fail.
- Look out pro-actively to build our skill-knowledge resource
ad widen the net.
- Reconstruct the Higher Education system to construct a knowledge
society, with inherent innovative temperament.
- Democratize education and employment opportunities and especially
improve the bottom of the pyramid Higher Education must extend
to include the talented and meritotious from all backgrounds irrespective
of social, economic or logistical disadvantages.
- Hiigher education institutes must compete free to attract resources
and talent to increase quality and delivery.
- Higher education institutes must be in excess of supply so that
we can attract the best brains from different parts of the world
to come to India for study and participate in its development.
- Build leadership and innovation in the development of the National
Education Policy developing a strategic model for skill-ing
India, especially developing more effective industry, education
and community partnerships.
- Make it mandatory o have a yearly quality assessment (rating)
done for all institutes of higher learning and vocational training,
irrespective of whether they are in the public or private sector.
These assessment agencies like NAAC can be expanded to include
agencies like CRISIL, CARE, ICRA, etc. Such rating must
be made available to all the stake holders and should be in public
domain.
- Widen the net for aspirants for Higher Education by freeing
education from the clutches of government control, so as to enable
more enrolments for higher education. Remove all entry barrier
and control in setting up new universities / colleges and institutes
of Higher Education. Instead only monitor quality through
mandatory quality assessment and its mandatory transparent disclosure
in all written communication as mentioned above.
- Completely eliminate subsides for higher education. Instead
allow Higher Education Institutes including state universities
to freely fix fees to cover cost of infrastructure & Provision
for research, teachers compensation etc. Flexibility in
fees would meet the needs o overall developmental funds.
Reserve 25% of the seats for the underprivileged at a nominal
fee. Others should pay through bank loans. The
highly subsidized higher education – students’ fees
not covering even 5% of the university / college budget is an
important reason for failing education standards. With meager
resources at their disposal, many universities are not even able
to provide basic lab and library facilities let alone attract
the best of talents for teaching jobs.
- Free setting up curriculum and let each university / college
set their own study materials, style of teaching & examinations.
This will help innovation, creativity and out of box thinking
among colleges / universities and benefit students.
In the interim, minimum guidelines for curriculum may be set but
these must not become a limiting factor.
- Provide a Sovereign guarantee to every citizen to get access
to a Bank loan without any collateral and without any burden on
his/her parents. The student will pay back from their earnings.
If the nation can give a sovereign guarantee to generate power
or build roads, can not the nation, in a knowledge economy, give
a sovereign guarantee to its citizen to educate themselves.
- State should establish a nation wide program and a national
institute for faculty training with at least a 100 branches in
all parts of India. The nation needs at least one million
new high quality faculty to teach the 15 million of so who would
require good higher education or vocational training every year.
Let universities/colleges reward the teachers by setting their
own scale of pay / compensation.
- Support basic and applied research. Encourage university/industry
tie-ups and joint programs through fax incentives.
- Develop stranger relationship with media, industry leaders,
senior bureaucrats, NGOs and civil society to ensure high quality
vocational education as a career path.
- Increase our depth of spending for effective knowledge based/vocational
skill learning.
- Increase the width of our technical courses form the existing
200 to 3000 courses.
- Provide enough choices for flexible study to all who want to
update their skills through e-learning, distance learning and
part time education.
- Encourage diversity and creativity in thought, action and participation
by giving students credits for work done outside the class rooms
eg. Serving in the armed forces, working with NGOs for upliftment
of the poor or pursuing their interests in revival of lost art
or craft etc.
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