Plan panel for pvt edu firms

The Planning Commission has an idea, which it feels will change the way you see higher education in the country.

Published on: May 15, 2006, 01:19:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Planning Commission has an idea, which it feels will change the way you see higher education in the country. It revolves around increased participation of private players — education companies, as the commission calls them.

In the concept paper for the Eleventh Plan, which starts from the next financial year, the commission has suggested that things be made easier for education providers (registered societies and companies) interested in opening institutions of higher education.

Instead of running around for approvals from the government and regulatory bodies, education providers will only need to get a grade from a grading authority to stipulate fee and infrastructure before starting admitting students. “Allow free entry of registered societies and education companies subject to their getting graded,” the concept paper says.

The commission feels in such an unrestricted education scenario, strict grading is essential to deliver quality education.

For the job, the government should bring in grading authorities, which will be governed by strict regulations.

“Introduce a law to allow the setting up of private education testing, teacher certification and school/college grading organisations,” the commission says.

Officials say the law will ensure that grading is uniform and done in right earnest, as the fee structure of an institution will depend on the grade it gets.

For foreign universities, the commission feels the government should adopt a “semi-restrictive approach” — depending on each university’s global grading. Entry of A-grade universities should be free. B-grade universities should be registered and get local grading like domestic universities. For the C-grade universities, the suggestion is prior approval and tight regulation, like the HRD Ministry’s plan for all foreign universities.

The concept paper will be discussed with HRD Ministry officials next month when sub-groups for the Five Year Plan are formed.

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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