New Delhi, June 08: The UPA government, now in its second term, has begun the process of revamping the country’s education system. In the first step taken on Monday, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal announced that the government has decided it would not accept any further applications for ‘Deemed-to-be-University’ status.
The decision comes a day after Sibal spoke of revamping the education system by putting in place a process to bring in transparency and accountability in institutions and curb unethical practices, including capitation fees.
Among the measures spelled out by Sibal were expansion and access to quality education for all sections of society, apart from the review of the procedure for grant of ‘Deemed-to-be-University’ status.
The new mechanism will also have steps to check capitation fees by professional colleges and setting up of a national council for higher education as a regulatory body.
Today’s decision comes in the wake of a raging controversy over huge capitation fees being demanded by professional colleges from students, including one medical college said to be run by a Union Minister from Tamil Nadu.
Commenting on the reports of two Tamil Nadu-based institutions allegedly demanding huge capitation fees, Sibal had said that his ministry will “rethink” the process under which institutions were given the ‘Deemed-to-be-University’ status and will set up a committee to review the functioning of the existing ones.
The minister added that the government had frozen all applications of aspiring deemed universities and his ministry was conducting a thorough review of the functioning of such universities now.
“We will rethink the structure in which all this must happen. At the moment, it is happening under Section 3 of the UGC Act. Therefore, it is under the control of the UGC and we will do a rethinking to what must be put in place to enable our systems to be transparent and accountable and to maintain the issues of excellence, equity and quality,” he said.
Sibal said UGC, which plays a crucial role in the grant of ‘Deemed-to-be-University’ status, can independently review the functioning of the institutions.
“But the ministry will conduct its own assessment. The ministry will set up its own committee. Very soon the committee will be set up. They will visit the deemed universities, may be the last 50 institutions which were given deemed university status.
“The report will come in the next three months. Depending on the gravity of violations of guidelines, the ministry will take actions which could include withdrawal of ‘deemed-to-be-university’ status from the errant institutions.
“But that really is the punitive route. I don’t think the country moves forward in punitive routes. We need to restructure the system so that we do not need to go through punitive routes. That is what we will do and that will be part of the agenda for the next 100 days,” he said.
“The committees will look at faculty-students ratio, infrastructure and all those issues. And in case of gross violation of guidelines, the status will be withdrawn. We are not interested in hurting institutes. The idea is to ensure that people get what they are promised,” Sibal said.
–Agencies