PM asks industry to invest in education, research

Hints at the need for alternative funding in higher education

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on Saturday, urged the country’s private sector and industry to invest in enhancing education and research in the country as India looks to increase its gross enrolment ratio from a meagre 18 per cent to 30 per cent by 2020.

“Today, our universities depend largely on grants for undertaking research. Greater support from industry will not only lead to better research outcomes but also enable industry to utilise these outcomes for meaningful practical application. It may be worthwhile on the part of our university academics to make a detailed study of how this interface works in other countries so that we can replicate the international best practices”, Singh said during the diamond jubilee celebrations of the University Grants Commission (UGC).

Singh’s request for funding comes at a time when a number of bills proposed by the Human Resource and Development Ministry are pending in Parliament including the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority Bill and Foreign Educational Institutions Bill. In addition, proposals to amend the AICTE Act and setting up a regulator for distance education has been pending at various stages.

The Prime Minister also expressed concerns about the lack of quality of education at India’s premier institutes and the shortage of faculty in the country. “This brings me to the related issue of shortage of faculty in our institutes of higher education. This problem is likely to become even more acute with the expansion that is planned in the coming years,” PM added.  The government is currently in the midst of rolling out the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) which will create 278 new universities and 388 new colleges in addition to converting 266 colleges to model degree colleges by the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan.

Singh also hinted at the need to create new models of financing for the higher education sector as the funding from the central government has declined in real term over the past years. “Although the demand for higher education has increased enormously over the years, the central and state governments’ financial support to institutions of higher education has declined in real terms. New models of financing higher education, based on well established norms, and improvements in the existing system of funding by the central and state governments, therefore, are critical concerns”, the PM said.

Higher educational institutes in the country had come in the line of fire after none of them could figure themselves amongst the Top 200 institutes in the world.