Reservation and FDI in education to be taught to students

The institution declared as a university only last year by the HRD ministry has offered 12 different areas for research , reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Apr 14, 2007, 04:07:44 IST

AFP | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The two most controversial issues in Indian education in the recent past --- reservation and entry of foreign education providers (FEP) --- are now subjects for research for the students in National University of Education Planning and Administration (NUEPA).

The institution declared as a university only last year by the HRD ministry has offered 12 different areas for research for a new M.Phil and Ph.D programmes to commence from the next academic year. “Reservation and entry of FEPs are among the issues on which research would be done,” confirmed NUEPA’s Vice Chancellor Professor Ved Prakash.

These issues had raised a lot of heat within and outside the government. Reservation created a furore all over the country after the 93rd amendment in Constitution was approved last year and now the government is trying to wriggle out of the Supreme Court’s stay on implementation of OBC reservation.

On FEP, the HRD ministry had faced a lot of opposition from the Commerce ministry forcing it to water down its proposed legislation to allow foreign universities in India. Left parties have also opposed entry of FEPs in India, citing it to be disastrous for the Indian education system.

Now, NUEPA, in the country’s first research programme on education, had found the subjects lucrative for research. “The subjects have not been studies with educational perspective so far,” Professor Prakash said. Participation of Scheduled Castes in higher education is just 10-13 per cent whereas that of Scheduled Tribe is just five per cent. There is no data on the number of OBC students in higher education.

This course will, however, provide opportunity to the students to study the impact of reservation in jobs and admissions and discrimination in education against the deprived and girl child in education. For FEPs, Prof. Prakash said, the key area of research would be the type of foreign institutes coming into India.

The four-year programme comes with scholarship as per the UGC stipend of Rs 8,000 per month for the first two years with contingency grant of Rs 10,000 per annum. During the remaining period, the stipend would be Rs 9,000 with contingency grant of Rs 20,000 per annum. Students with minimum 55 per cent in masters can apply for the programme.

The other subjects for research are educational planning, economics of education, school education, professional education, education management information system, education administration, education policy, higher education, comparative education and education and globalisation.

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

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.