Subsidise higher education

CHANDIGARH, Dec 7: Secretary General of the Association of Indian Universities, K. B. Powar, today blamed the government for the financia...

CHANDIGARH, Dec 7: Secretary General of the Association of Indian Universities, K. B. Powar, today blamed the government for the financial crunch currently being faced by the universities. The government, he added, was not responsive towards the need for subsidising higher education.

In an interview with Newsline, Powar stated that the Ministry of Finance paper on government subsidies of May 1997 classified higher education as a as non-merit good. "The government paper is based essentially on whatever the World Bank says while the World Bank standards compare all developing countries to African countries, which is not fair. Even the South American nations are more responsive to higher education. In a country like Brazil, over three per cent of the GDP is spent on higher education. In India the figure is below even one per cent,” Powar lamented.

He suggested that higher education should be supported by the Industry as is the case with UK. "We can’t produce students who cater to the specific needs of the industry. The industry should arrange for specialised training of the educated personnel that the universities churn out,” he said.

Story continues below this ad

The reason for the "failure of our polytechnics” he stated was that vocational courses "were ineffective. Besides, people do not want to send their children to polytechnics, everybody still wants them to be doctors or engineers,” Powar said.

Elaborating on the two-day Curricula Development Centre Workshop being held at the at the Centre of Advanced Study in Geology (CASG), here today, Powar (who is also the Convenor of the Earth Science Panel of the University Grants Commission) stated that the workshop was being held to assess the "reasons for failure of implementation of model syllabi recommended by the CDC.” He added that the current workshop would cater to the universities from the North and the East. Earlier, he added, workshops were conducted for students from the rest of the country. "We are getting feedback from the entire country. For proper implementation, the universities will have to change their entire academic structure,” he said. "There should be cafeteria type of programmes — choose what you want,” he said and added that the attempt was to “evolve a pattern which is not only academically strong but also pragmatic.” Meanwhile, the workshop was inaugurated by the PU vice-chancellor M. M. Puri, this morning.