Allow private hand in education

Planning Commission suggests PM to allow pvt sector to earn profits from professional institutions and give freedom to pvt institutes to levy fees, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 3, 2008, 01:54:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Suggesting a landmark change in higher education policy, a Planning Commission group has asked PM Manmohan Singh to allow private sector to earn profits from professional institutions and give freedom to private institutes to levy fees.

"The measures," said Anwarul Huda, the member who headed the group, "would encourage corporates to set up quality higher education institutes." “Expansion in higher education as envisaged in the 11th five-year plan would not take place till the regulatory impediments are removed,” he said, releasing the report on Wednesday.

In India, only non-profit organisations are allowed to set up educational institutions. But, before this policy was adopted the Tatas had set up IISc, Bangalore. Now others, like Reliance, have expressed willingness to join the sector, if regulatory impediments are removed.

If the recommendation is accepted, it would mean more money for expansion of professional education and improvement in quality of higher education. It would also bridge the gap between demand and supply of higher education.

“There is a $400 million market for Indian graduates to tap. The IT sector needs one lakh professionals every year. Such a change would help in meeting the demand,” Huda said.

BC Mungerkar, another member, had a slightly different take. He said there should be a condition that money earned from education by the private sector is pumped back to expand and improve quality of education.

He disagreed with the recommendation that corporates should have a free hand in deciding fee strucuture. “The ultimate control of the government on deciding fees should remain.”

Mungerkar’s stand is not very different from the HRD ministry’s, which — in its reply to a similar recommendation of the National Knowledge Commission — had categorised education as social service and therefore, junked the idea of earning profits.

While recommending freedom to fix fees, the group’s report on service sector wanted the private sector to give scholarships and freeships to meritorious students from historically disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. Huda was quick to point out that this did not suggest any reservation for the disadvantaged groups.

But it would not be easy for the government to accept the recommendations in light of stiff resistance of the Left. The ministry had failed to introduce the bill to allow foreign education providers in India because the Left are not happy with regulatory framework proposed in the bill.

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

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.