Setting up a National Commission for Higher Education & Research (NCHER) as a super-regulator, developing IITs and IIMs as world-class universities, a common GRE-type entrance exam for admission to universities and inviting the top 200 universities from abroad to set up shop in India are some of the key highlights of the final recommendations of the Yashpal committee on higher education.
In an indication of the importance the government attaches to the recommendations, minister for human resource development Kapil Sibal said Yashpal will be a member of the ministerial committee that will steer the first hundred days? agenda for the education sector.
The Yashpal committee report is significant, as the UPA government has identified the development of the education sector as a key agenda. The report is likely to unleash sizeable investment in the sector that has been starved of funds due to stifling rules for setting up colleges and universities.
Justifying the need for a super-regulator through an Act of Parliament as a constitutional amendment, the report argues for subsuming UGC and AICTE within a single higher education commission. ?There is no need for separate councils for various areas and the responsibilities of various existing councils should be changed.?
The report says universities should have far more academic freedom and institutional autonomy. They would not need prior approval to start courses or develop competencies in any stream. ?The (regulator) would move to a verification and authentication system.? This would be a key difference from the existing ?inspection-approval? functioning of the UGC and AICTE. Instead, it has encouraged the universities to find ?complementary sources of funds? such as from philanthropy.
The report also seeks to bring down the curtains on deemed universities, saying any further approvals should be put on hold till unambiguous and rational guidelines are evolved.
Current institutes with deemed status would be given a period of three years to develop as universities and fulfill the accreditation norms, failing which the status given to them would be withdrawn, it says.
Noting the need to allow top foreign universities the report says they will be have to give an Indian degree and be subject to rules and regulations applicable to any Indian university.
It has also asked for huge expansion of scholarships for students to expand the scope for higher education and suggested the introduction of a National Education Tribunal to adjudicate on disputes among stake-holders within institutions and between institutions so as to reduce litigation in courts involving universities and higher education institutions.
