Private colleges to be eligible for govt grants

Students and teachers in private colleges and universities would soon be eligible for government scholarships and research grants, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 5, 2008, 24:50:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Students and teachers in private colleges and universities would soon be eligible for government scholarships and research grants. The University Grants Commission has finalized a proposal to provide financial help to self-financing colleges. “The commission had discussed the proposal but no final decision has been made. The issue would be taken up in the next commission meeting,” UGC secretary RK Chauhan told Hindustan Times.

Once the proposal is cleared, private institutions would be able to seek financial grants from UGC from its various schemes for teachers and students, but not for development of infrastructure. Private medical and agriculture institutes would not be eligible.

In case of students, the UGC has identified remedial coaching for students of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, minority communities for various competitive examinations and traditional courses. Individual students would also be able to apply for undergraduate and post-graduate scholarships and fellowships. Those clearing NET will be able to compete Junior Research Fellowship.

Teachers who want to pursue research will get money from UGC for minor research projects. The institutes would be allowed to seek money from faculty improvement programs for doctoral and post-doctoral courses, the proposal states.

The UGC’s proposal aims at covering majority of Indian students, who are now in private institutions. Private bodies run about 70 per cent of the 80,000 colleges and half of 382 universities in India. The sector has grown the most in the last decade. “There is a need to recognize their (self-financing institutions) contribution and to include them as important entities of higher education fulfilling the dream of expansion of higher education,” the proposal explained.

The proposal, based on the recommendations of the expert committee headed by Dr Shivajirao Kadam, Vice-Chancellor of Bharati Vidyapeeth, says that private institutions can seek government grants as they are recognized under section 12 (b) of the UGC Act. The section allows private institutions to apply only under select schemes of UGC, which address individual teachers and students.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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