With Sibal out, Planning Commission pushes for reforms in higher education

With Kapil Sibal out of the HRD ministry, country’s top advisory body, the Planning Commission, has pushed for more reforms in higher education to tackle the “deteriorating quality” and “eroding public confidence” in the country’s public education system, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 2, 2013, 17:32:32 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With Kapil Sibal out of the HRD ministry, country’s top advisory body, the Planning Commission, has pushed for more reforms in higher education to tackle the “deteriorating quality” and “eroding public confidence” in the country’s public education system.

The panel has asked the HRD ministry to shift its focus from country’s exemplary institutions - Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management - and try to revamp the state and private sector institutions which enroll over 97% of total students in higher education.

“The strategy to improve quality should be based on national initiatives that benefit a wider range of institutions by creating a strong performance culture through effective use of competitive grants, focus on evaluation and feedback of both teaching and research and ensure transparency through information disclosure to enhance student choice,” plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia said in a letter to new HRD minister MM Pallam Raju.

Country's national objective is to double enrollment in higher education by 2020.

The plan has identified 15 strategic issues which need ministry’s immediate attention in the next five years including increasing the capacity of existing institutions to enroll more students rather than starting new institutions.

It also wants the ministry to significantly increase in budgetary support for equity related measures through targeted, integrated and effective equity related schemes to replace the existing maze of diffused schemes. And, the allocation should be made foster excellence by improving quality of teaching and research.

The panel also wants the HRD ministry to give more autonomy to institutions and focus only on evaluating their performance. It also wants more transparency in fee determination, placements and faculty appointments.

Ahluwalia admitted that all resources needed to implement the reform package may not be available because of financial constraints but said that the fiscal limitations should not prevent the ministry from “pushing various high impact ideas” that requires less investment.

He, however, said that whatever money is available should be directly related to desired outcomes. The higher allocation could also be used for hiring foreign faculty, the panel said, adding that the institutions should strive for alliance with other institutions and industry.

The second higher education reform, the panel believes, is needed to compete with China and other emerging economies which have increased focus on higher education to leverage benefit of the growing economy.

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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