A lesson in higher education

The HRD Ministry is full of red faces these days. It had formed a Higher Education Committee under Prof Yash Pal with the hope of coming out with an alternative set of recommendations to the PMs National Knowledge Commission. But the Yash Pal Committee has ended up backing the NKC. It has recommended scrapping of both the University Grants Commission UGC and All India Council for Technical Education AICTE and replacing them with a Higher Education Commission,just like the NKC. At an interaction with committee members,UGC chairman S K Thorat and AICTE top boss R A Yadav expressed great unhappiness with the recommendations to scrap the bodies they head. The duo told the committee members that they should have suggested corrective measures instead of complete scrapping. Committee members,it is learnt,told them to look beyond the organisations they were heading.