UGC chairman SK Thorat on Wednesday begged to differ with some policy-makers on public-private partnership in higher education while seeking low fee structure to ensure that all get equal higher education opportunities.
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Delivering a keynote address at ASSOCHAM’s conference on Globalisation and Higher Education, Thorat said there should be joint ventures between public and private universities including foreign as done in China.
While referring to WTO-GATS guidelines on entry of foreign universities, he said, they should provide education to poorest of the poor whose access to higher education is less than two per cent as compared to rich whose access is as high as 57 per cent, equivalent to enrolment in developed countries. The government will soon formulate a policy on entry of foreign education providers.
Thorat, however, admitted that UGC has limited knowledge about quality of higher education in India. Of the total 18,000 colleges, grading on basis of quality is done for only 6,000 colleges. Of that, only 25 per cent are of A grade, while 50 per cent are B grade and rest are of the lowest grade. Of the total 357 universities, nine have been identified for potential of excellence.
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But, then higher education has grown from just one per cent gross enrolment in 1950s to about 13 per cent in 2003. “It is a big achievement. We have the largest higher education system in the world. Expanding it also need lots of resources,” he explained.
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But, then higher education has grown from just one per cent gross enrolment in 1950s to about 13 per cent in 2003. “It is a big achievement. We have the largest higher education system in the world. Expanding it also need lots of resources,” he explained.
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Still, the disparities are wide. Thorat said only 2.4 per cent of India’s poor has access to higher education, the percentage among rural poor is just 1.3 per cent while it is less than one per cent for casual labour.
On the other side, influentials like Jains and Christians have an enrolment ratio of more than 50 per cent as compared to just 12 per cent for Hindus and eight per cent among Muslims. "The disparity can be removed only through inclusive education," he said.
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.
