Innovating to Excel

Addressing the concern of quality in higher education, Rashtriya Uchattar Shiksha Abhiyan (National Higher Education Mission) under the Ministry of Human Resources, has recently proposed to put a ceiling of 200 on the maximum number of colleges that can be affiliated to any university. Current figure highlights the Osmania University has 901 colleges affiliated to it while 811 colleges are attached to Pune University. Rashtrusant Tukadoji Maharaj University, Nagpur has 800 colleges with it and Rajasthan as well as Mumbai University have 735 and 711 colleges attached to them. The average number of affiliated colleges per university is 300.
There have been instances where several state universities are having large number of colleges affiliated to a single university, and this leads to decline in quality of education being offered in some of the universities, so such a ceiling is a welcome step. But, how this proposal will be implemented given the skewed college and university ratio will remain to be a tough task for MHRD. This also calls for increasing the number of central and state universities in the country. RUSA, the one lakh crore rupees scheme, when implemented will lead to setting up and upgradation of new colleges and universities.
President Pranab Mukherjee recently inaugurated a new laboratory of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research – Indian Institute of Petroleum (CSIR-IIP) at Dehradun. He highlighted that to become a knowledge economy, India needs to revitalise research and increase its R&D spend. And the good news is that India is fast emerging as a hub for Research and Development (R&D). Big multinationals as well as international universities are seeking collaborations or off-shoring their R&D projects to India, and pumping in investment. Currently, India’s GER in PhD is less than one percent, but this can be improved if we provide better opportunities and fellowships to our budding researchers and scientists.
To contribute our share in building the knowledge economy, we had organised 9th eINDIA Education Summit 2013 on 23-24 July, 2013, at Hyderabad International Convention Centre. In this issue we have tried to present a summary of the views of various stakeholders for the overall development of education to achieve educational goals. Reading the report on eINDIA 2013, you will get a comprehensive view of the education related projects that are currently being executed in the country. The eINDIA 2013 report also sets out where proof, promise and potential lies for technology in education.

Dr Ravi Gupta
Editor-in-Chief
Ravi.Gupta@elets.in
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