Ministry clears community colleges to make up shortfall in skilled workforce A community college is an academic institution committed to higher learning,

, but on a smaller, more local scale than a traditional college or university. Most community colleges offer associate's degrees, which can be completed in about two years, as well as general courses of interest offered on a class by- class basis. The goals of most community colleges are twofold. First, they are an affordable way to get access to university-level material. Second, they are a means of providing a range of educational opportunities to local residents, which can both boost job potential and improve awareness of such things as arts and foreign languages. Of India's 51crore workforce, more than 4.6crore are unemployed, and this number could rise, the committee has warned, unless workplace requirements are factored in the syllabi and a flexible and open skill-based education system is created to cater to a huge potential workforce outside mainstream education.

National Education Day Celebrated at the birth anniversary of Indias first education minister and veteran freedom fighter MAK Azad. RTE AND SARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAAN. MAK Azad emphasise on universal education and secular India. In secondary and higher educations accesses is low in comparison to primary level and this male-female disparity is high which has created economic disparity in India. Sri-Lanka (Most developed in social parameters in South Asia) in the neighbourhood doesnt have disparity in education in comparison to males-females. North-South education inequality in education has to be addressed. In Human development Index, India losses maximum points in Education and Health. Unless provided support like technology to RTE, only access to educational institutions will not solve the issue. Urban-Rural divide has led to inaccessibility to education for rural areas (70% Indias Population). Not by ramps and toilets alone It is a sad commentary on our nation that institutional exclusion came after Independence, when disabled children were left out of the Ministry of Education (1966) and shifted to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE). Two ministries address the educational and school needs of disabled children but their different agendas leave 70 per cent of them out of the services of both. When it comes to congenital disability, institutional discrimination begins from birth. Child Development pedagogy does not touch them. Though the Ministry of Women and Child Development carries out the worlds largest preschool programme, i.e. the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), it excludes children with disability. There is regional variance but a majority are excluded from even the basic human right of nutrition on the grounds of disability. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WCD) does not include disabled children. As they are disabled, they dont need protection. Its not our job, but that of the Ministry of Social Justice, is the repeated argument. Government departments and NGOs dealing with special schools think that Special Education is Inclusive Education, so they turn to special educationists to operationalize the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act. The Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI), a regulatory body of the MoSJE, says that only special teachers can teach children with disabilities (CWD). According to the RCI, if an uncertified person teaches disabled children, it constitutes a criminal offence. Disabled children can never be taught by regular teachers if they do not get an RCI certificate. This is a violation of the RTE. The RTE is about inclusive education; its not about special education. There are 1.5 million schools

and regular teachers need to be more aware of dealing with children who are marginalised due to poverty, gender, religion and disability. Inclusive education needs to exist at the heart of all teaching curricula. The RTE cannot address the needs of disabled children unless it moves away from the focus on special education and the exclusive emphasis on providing physical accessibility to schools.

Meta-university concept is gaining ground Under the meta-university arrangement, students can pursue their course in three State-run universities and benefit from their expertise and infrastructure simultaneously. A single postgraduate course will be jointly offered by the three universities and students will pursue each semester in one university. The final semester will be done in industry for practical training.

Comparing Harvard apples with JNU oranges While the poor quality of Indian universities is lamentable, does the solution lie in emulating the developed countries where high academic standards are now negated by the degenerating commercialisation of education? Thus students pay an annual fee of $40,000 for a bachelors degree in an American Ivy League institution, and the average student-loan debt of 2011 in the U.S. was $26,500, rendering them perpetual bonded labourers of the market. Students are not trained to become critical thinkers, but foot soldiers of the establishment. Therefore, they graduate without pondering over what it means when the university gives its presidents multimillion dollar salaries and its janitors $7 per hour. Ultimately, the ranking debate is not just about Indian universities entering the top 200, but also the need for a radically new academic culture, reducing inequalities of global academia, the ends of education, and the limitations of the ranking exercise itself.

Any ranking of global educational institutions will be problematic if it does not take into account disparities in resources between rich and poor countries. Training the teacher The failure of the vast majority of candidates in the Central Teacher Eligibility Test is convincing proof that the system of teacher education is in urgent need of repair. In this case, trainees with a B. Ed degree could not pass the examination designed to test their fitness for appointment as teachers in Central government schools, and some Central Board of Secondary Education institutions. Demand for greater numbers of teachers has led to massive quantitative expansion of the number of institutions and courses at various levels in recent years, but without the necessary emphasis on infrastructure, faculty qualification and learning resources. The imperative to raise the entry-level qualification for training of teachers from Plus Two, and make it a well-rounded degree programme has been underscored by the NCFTE. It would be worthwhile to invest in a four-year degree programme after senior secondary, or a twoyear programme after acquiring a Bachelors degree. J.S. Verma Commission appointed by the Supreme Court has also highlighted the importance of making teacher education a part of the higher education system to introduce the necessary rigour and exposure to various integral disciplines. Making it compulsory to have a dedicated school attached to a pre-service teacher education institution, as the Verma panel suggests, could be one way to ensure that graduates acquire the necessary competence and skills. Such a system would naturally be far superior to distance learning courses.

It is also important to note that 90 per cent of the pre-service teacher education courses are in the non-government sector and the state needs to play a more active role in improving institutional capacity especially in the East and Northeast.

First set up the labs, then dream the Nobel But shockingly for India, 40 per cent of its researchers are emigrating to pursue their research abroad; the aspiring economic powerhouse is at the bottom of the list for retaining research talent. So why does a country with a trillion dollar economy not attract its own researchers? A peek into the state of research in India can give some answers. In 2011, of the 14,617,000 people who graduated from the colleges in India, 12 per cent pursued post graduate degrees and an abysmal one per cent pursued research in the country. The low interest in research is due to sub-standard facilities, which in turn is due to a lack of funding in most research institutes. Indians are willing to pursue research but not in India. In 2011, the number of students from India pursuing higher education (masters and PhD) in the U.S. was 103,895 and they formed 14 per cent of the higher education population in the U.S. alone. In terms of research productivity, India has 7.8 scientists per 1,000 population compared to 180.66 in Canada, 53.13 in Korea and 21.15 in the U.S. The scarcity in research was vindicated by the number of patents filed in 2010. There were a total of 36,812 patents filed in India, of which only 7,044 were domestic applications and the remaining, foreign patent applications. Of these 7,044 applications, only 1,725 applications were granted patents. One of the pillars of higher educational institutes, leave alone research, is the amount of capital that is invested in educational activities. Even in the 12th Five Year Plan proposed by the Planning Commission, the educational expenditure is not anywhere near the proposed target of six per cent of GDP. The investment in higher education as of 2009-10 according to a recent report released by the University Grants Commission (Higher Education at a glance) was a paltry 1.25 per cent of GDP. The U.S. on the other hand has a public expenditure at 3.1 per cent (2007) of its almost $15 trillion GDP. Harvard Universitys endowment stands at $32 billion whereas the total extramural grants provided to Indian universities put together is about Rs.12 billion! As a first step up, there should be an increase in spending in higher education research to at least two per cent of the GDP in order to try infusing capital into academic research. The Protection and Utilisation of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill, (PUPFIP), the Indian equivalent of the Bayh-Dohle Act, has been pending in Parliament since 2008. If passed, it could help to leverage the best out of the intellectual properties of patents. A recent report from the Indian School Business (India R&D 2011 Industry & Academia Linkages) estimates that the total R&D spending of the top 100 companies is Rs.11,500crore. Only 13 per cent of it goes into partnerships with universities. Intellectual property regulation and awareness could assist in increasing this share of spending by corporates in building university research centres. Alumni involvement ensures that the universities interest is the most supreme (especially in an era where education is non-profit) and everything else becomes secondary. As such, it would be an interesting idea for the state to impose a minimum 50 per cent involvement of the alumni in the functioning of university boards. This would democratise the process more, and help to nurture talented alumni who could contribute back to the universities. The top 19 out of the 20 universities in the U.S. News rankings have a common dominating denominator. All of them are run predominately by alumni of the institutions. Even in public universities such as Purdue, there is a significant alumni involvement in the boards. In India, this is an idea non-existent in government institutes and very rare in private institutes.

Centre to offer lucrative stints for Indian scientists

The Planning Commission is working on a scheme to get top Indian scientists working abroad spend some time doing teaching and research in scientific and technical research institutions in the country. The selected scientists would be paid directly by the government through a special window and not by the institutions, where they would work. The remuneration is likely to be at least Rs. 55 lakh ($1,00,000). In addition, they would be offered fully furnished accommodation plus some relocation expenses and a certain amount as research grant. The scientists would also have the flexibility to choose as to when they want to take up the proposal and also the length of time they want to spend here. Asked whether the offers were not way above the salaries and perks enjoyed by the scientists working here, the official said we are not talking about people who are actively looking for a job here. We are talking about those scientists who already are in prestigious positions abroad, but want to do something for their motherland. He pointed out that China was able to attract over 1,000 of its scientists working abroad to return to their homeland for varying periods of time for taking up teaching and research assignments. Australia too recently came out with a similar scheme that provided positions at three times the normal remuneration for top class Australian scientists working abroad. The scheme is proposed to be called National Jawaharlal Nehru Science Fellowship/ Professorships programme.

Wealth does not lead to world-class institutions Indias higher education needs to aim much higher than a typical poor country. If global comparisons are not fair, other measures of quality independent of government-created evaluation bodies or the print media need to be devised. If it is not fair to compare Indias universities with those in rich countries, how about comparing them with what they were like two or three decades ago? Have the same universities become better over time? Other than providing access to higher education, have there been improvements in their quality? If the majority of engineering colleges or management schools are as bad as employers say they are, why not rank them in comparison to our own leading institutions, whether JNU or others? If one takes their reasoning that vast disparities in wealth between the West and the rest explains why third-rate institutions are found in poor countries to its logical conclusion, India must wait to get rich before dreaming to build world-ranked institutions. This reasoning flies against the commonsense view that a larger number of world-class institutions, whether ranked globally or not, can contribute enormously to Indias economic growth and dynamism in the coming decades. Wealth has not brought democracy or world-class universities to oil-rich Middle Eastern countries. Arguably, precisely because these countries are not democratic, it is unlikely that their universities will ever, with or without the help of NYU or American University, reach the heights of western universities.

R&D to get major boost in 12th Plan The aim is to take India to the sixth place: Kasturirangan The aim during the 12th Plan is to take Indias position from ninth to sixth in terms of the number of publication of scientific papers, and increase the number of full-time research workers from 1.5 lakh to 2.5 lakh, Dr.Kasturirangan told The Hindu on the sidelines of a function here. Science and technology gets a quantum jump in terms of government allocation in the 12th Plan, he said. The governments intention is to increase its expenditure on research and development in science and technology to up to 1 per cent of the GDP and get the corporate

sector to invest an additional 1 per cent by extending substantial support to high-risk projects, including prototype-building, he said. Process to enable IIMs grant degrees begins The government and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have begun the process of drafting a Bill that would empower these premier institutions to grant degrees. As of now, the IIMs only grant diplomas to students though these diplomas are globally acclaimed. The IIMs were started through an executive order and are not governed under any law. Hence they cannot grant degrees for which there has been a huge demand.

New priests of learning Mr.Pranab Mukherjee meets the Vice-Chancellors of the countrys 40 Central Universities today. The heads of these institutions will project their respective achievements and constraints. There clearly is an impatience now with the way in which the existing Acts and Statutes of Universities that allow for the routine administration and change in the pedagogy of teaching and learning, are hindering the Great Transformation of higher education. The main culprit is perceived to be the consultative and deliberative process which had hitherto allowed for the different authorities of the University, notably the different Faculties consisting of the Professoriate of various departments, to originate and deliberate academic ideas in their respective spheres. These are seen as stockades of vested interests, incapable of innovative academic thought. It is as if tenured teachers busy writing for ever routine formulae on blackboards had turned their backs to society and the world of ideas at large. Encouraged by the not so gentle prodding of the HRD and the University Grants Commission, the Vice Chancellors of a large number of Central Universities have fashioned a new messianic role for themselves, and as with other such leaders of the flock, woe befall those who do not genuflect before the new priests of learning .

Scoring higher on education India is a global leader in terms of GDP spent by public and private sources on higher education. India devotes a very high proportion of its national wealth on higher education. At 3 per cent of the GDP (1.2 per cent from public and 1.8 per cent from private sources), India spends more than what the United States (1 per cent public and 1.6 per cent private) or Korea (0.7 per cent public and 1.9 per cent private) spends on higher education. This suggests a limited scope for further increase, though more is required since in absolute figures, investment in higher education does not measure up to international terms. Further, there is an urgent need for effective and efficient use of funds to promote both equity and excellence. The gross enrolment rate the proportion of the age group accessing higher education of 18 per cent is among the highest for countries at Indias level of development. This is particularly impressive given Indias size and complexity. The recently approved 12th FiveYear Plan aims at raising the gross enrolment rate to 25 per cent by 2017, which is both desirable and achievable. Finally, academic salaries, by accurate purchasing power parity comparisons, are quite good. Among 28 countries in a recent study, India ranked fourth in entry salaries for academics better than the other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) nations. China scored near the bottom for average salaries. This good showing is the result of the major pay increase implemented in 2006.

Though India invests significant sums in postsecondary education, with the funds increasingly coming from students and their families, it does not spend effectively. There is little coordination between the States and the Central government. t. However, decentralisation of part of the curriculum holds great promise. With greater academic autonomy, the core courses could be retained by the university, while the responsibility for the rest of the curriculum could be devolved to the colleges. This would create a desired innovation culture in the colleges. Clustering and even merging colleges that are very small would also have to figure in this reform. In addition, universities that affiliate a large number of colleges would need to be reorganised into two or more universities, with each affiliating a smaller number of colleges to improve overall academic effectiveness. The United Kingdom, Australia, France, and Japan had enrolment rates of 18, 23, 24, and 25 per cent in 1975; and Korea enrolled only 8 per cent in 1975, which rose to 13 per cent in 1980, and then rapidly rose to 34 per cent in 1985. All these countries have achieved a system close to universal higher education; but it must be recognised that enrolments have grown based on the rise in demand for qualified people, with agriculture contributing to less than 5 per cent of the workforce. Considering that over half of the people in India are still engaged in the farm sector with limited need for higher qualifications, current levels of enrolment in India appear to be adequate. Academics, and especially college teachers, are constrained by rigid bureaucracy. Further, their work is not carefully evaluated salary increases and promotions are awarded rather on the basis of seniority. Unfortunately, when salaries were increased in 2006, this boon was not accompanied by any reforms in the teaching profession or requirements for evaluation. A System of Academic Performance Indicators for promotion and appointment of professors and lecturers is yet to take roots. It appears that Indian academics want to do a good job and most are committed to their profession. However, structural impediments and an ossified culture get in the way.

Raise gross enrolment ratio to 30 per cent by 2020, says Pallam Raju Regarding issues of quality of education in private institutions, he said some of the pending Bills, most notably the mandatory accreditation Bill and the malpractices Bill, were aimed at ensuring quality. He also hinted at restructuring the fees in public-funded institutions. The fee in many of our major public-funded colleges is very low. We need to slowly shift towards increasing this while providing sufficient scholarship to deserving students, he said. E-governance initiatives would be brought in to streamline the performance of regulatory bodies such as the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The race to get into IIMs and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) is spoiling the childhood of our students. Society should let children be themselves and allow them to opt for careers of their choice. There has not been enough emphasis on Humanities in our education sector of late, he said. The gross enrolment ratio in higher education should be raised to 30 per cent by 2020 from the current level of 18.8 per cent, Union Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD) M.M. Pallam Raju has said.