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In the words of Indira Gandhi “Education is a liberating force and in our age it is also a democratising force, cutting across the barriers of caste and class, smoothing out inequalities imposed by birth and other circumstances”. Education is thus a liberating and evolutionary force helping the individual to rise from material mundane life to superior plane of intellectual and spiritual consciousness. Education widens the horizons and helps us to set our perspectives in right direction. Growth in higher education has helped India emerge as a country known worldwide for its knowledge society. Prior to Independence, the growth of institutions of higher education in India was very slow and diversification in areas of higher studies was very limited. After Independence, the number of institutions has increased significantly. There are today, 329 Universities and 203 state universities. The Indian Higher Education System has increased fourteen-fold in terms of the number of universities and thirty three-fold in terms of the number of colleges, in comparison to the number at the time of Independence. There are 329 universities and 203 state universities in all at present. The Indian Higher Education system comprises 18 Central Universities, 90 Deemed Universities, five institutions established under States legislation Acts, 13 institutes of national importance established by Central legislation and nearly 16,885 colleges.
At the beginning of the academic year 2004, the total number of students enrolled in the formal system of education in universities and colleges was 99.53 lakh- 12.97 lakh (13.3 per cent) in university departments and 86.57 lakh (86.97 per cent) in affiliated colleges. Despite serious handicaps of means and resources, the country has built up a very large system of education and created a vast body of men and women equipped with a higher order of scientific and technological capabilities, robust humanist and philosophical thought and creativity. Modern India is set to forge a bright future and to contribute significantly to the higher goals of world peace, human unity and universal welfare.
At the inception of planning in the country (1950-51), India was spending Rs. 172 million on higher education. Government expenditure alone was of the order of Rs. 42,035 million in 1996-97 and it has risen further during the subsequent period. However, due to increase in prices and population the demand for higher education has increased. Over decades, the share of higher education in the total government expenditure on education has declined. The First Plan allocated nine per cent of the total education expenditure to higher education and another 20 per cent to technical education. By the Fourth Plan, the higher education’s share alone had risen to 25 per cent. Since then there has been a declining trend. The Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of UPA Government has focused for public spending on education to at least 65 per cent of GDP in a phased manner.
The report by a committee set up by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) reproduced another set of figures – public expenditure on higher education per student, adjusted for the value of the rupee in 1993-94. Between 1990-91 and 2002-03, it has declined in real terms by nearly 28 percentage points, from Rs. 7676 per student every year to only Rs. 5522.
Though the growth in expenditure on higher education was erratic during the 1980s, it had increased on the whole at a rate of growth of 7.3 per cent per annum. The 1990s heralded an era of austerity and higher education suffered greatly. In the Tenth Plan, the emphasis is being laid to reduce inter-regional disparities by supporting universities and colleges located in the backward areas. During the second year of the Tenth Plan, Plan grants amounting to Rs. 180.60 crore were provided to 120 (112+8 other state universities) state universities for the purpose of general development. The massive development in higher education has been guided by a process of planning and recommendations of several national commissions set up by the Government of India. The objectives of higher education have gradually become more and more precise and a system of governance is developing in the direction of increasing autonomy and accountability. The UPA Government is also giving importance to the issue of giving autonomy to institutions of higher learning and professional educational institutions. The UPA Government has fulfilled its promise to allocate more resources to education and monitor programme as indicated in the Common Minimum Programme.
Higher education institutions have to play a more proactive role in promoting entrepreneurship and enterprises. In this context, the UGC has partnered with National Science and Technology entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, to promote entrepreneurship, technology commercialization, technology business incubation and knowledge processing parks in the country. A new model of Entrepreneurship Development Cells (EDC) with a component for providing training and hands on experience to students in the area of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is evolved in partnership with NASSCOM and supported jointly with the DST. The UGC has plans to help the DST in setting up of new Technology Business Incubators and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Parks (STEPs) in higher education institutions.
The UGC has established the National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC) for carrying out periodical assessment of universities and colleges in the country. It is now important that higher education institutions protect their intellectual property properly. This being a new development, most universities have to develop know-how to enable their researchers to protect their IPRs. Therefore, there is a need felt for creating an awareness, putting in place an enabling policy environment, proper structures and processes and also provide financial support to enable researchers to protect their IPRs.
India has been following a policy of international co-operation in the arena of Higher Education ever since Independence. Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization in Higher Education got an added impetus since 1991 with India embarking upon the process of economic reforms as a member of WTO. In the changing scenario India is closely observing the opportunities and threats of GATS agreement on higher education.
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