JOIN USThe National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) here on Sunday gave away accreditation certificates to various universities and colleges across the country.
Representatives from 28 states and more than 350 heads of educational institutions were present at the award ceremony of the NAAC which has come up with an upgraded accreditation process this year.
Centre stage
Commending the premier educational institutions for being open to evaluation, University Grants Commission (UGC) chairman Ved Prakash said education was no more in the periphery of national priority, it had occupied the centre stage in the socio-economic development of the nation, receiving budget allocations like never before.
History of Indian educational institutions teaches that schools such as Nalanda attracted the best of scholars around the globe. The country has the task to make India a global educational hub. For this, universities must focus on creating a knowledge pool instead of stopping at mere learning system. Research and innovation must be our concern, apart from making ourselves open to evaluation, he said.
The UGC official lauded private institutions saying that majority of the best quality education has come through private institutions. One of the glaring loopholes in the higher education system is that it is fragmented.
Divided
“We have separate universities for a single discipline, which is a barrier to holistic learning,” he said quoting example of agriculture universities isolated from other disciplines of science. “The life of a university lies in synergy of all disciplines, not in isolation of areas of study,” he added.
Inclusion of areas which have low density of higher education institutions is another work that needs to be undertaken immediately. Besides, education sector is suffering from low professional accountability that needs to be rectified, Kumar said.
He said sustained financial assistance to institutions and making academics lucrative for involvement of bright minds in corporate companies would contribute to rejuvenating higher education. Most importantly, universities must set their priorities on their own with the State being a supervisor than a regulatory body, he said. The award ceremony, held for the fourth consecutive year, is aimed at getting a feedback from the accredited institutions and providing a platform for sharing knowledge.
Five Year Plan
He said the 11th Five Year Plan’s ambition of achieving 15 per cent enrolment in higher education was successful. The UGC has sought an allocation of Rs 1.84 lakh crore for the 12th five year plan, which aims to enrol two million students each year. Besides plans are afoot to set 374 institutions in educationally backward districts, he added.
On the proposed bifurcation of Bangalore University, he said the split would help the varsity in managing a large number of affiliated colleges efficiently.