Foreign universities bill passed by the cabinet, but will face opposition (including from within the Congress)
Just a few days back, the Union Cabinet passed a Bill called the Foreign Educational Institution (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010 which empowers Foreign Universities to setup their campuses in India. This is a Bill that seeks to regulate the functioning of these Foreign Universities in India, something that was not on the cards, given some of the challenges that the Government was facing in its other legislative actions. And, this is a sensitive subject, with a lot of opposition to the Government in this action, from the Communist Parties, from other parties, and from within the Government itself. There was a plan to bring the Bill to Parliament in the first term of the UPA, but given the dependence of the Government on the Communist Parties, the Bill was dropped at that time, and the concept had been in cold storage ever since then.
The Bill will allow foreign educational institutions to set up their campus within India, and be treated as private universities. They will have certain freedoms to make it more attractive for them to set up shop here in India, such as:
- The foreign institutions will be allowed to set their own fees, like other private institutions; this should enable students who want to get the level of teaching in these institutions to get this cheaper by joining the India campus rather than making a beeline for the foreign campuses (it is expected that the fees here will be cheaper than in the US or other countries)
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Categories: Congress, Education Tags: Bill, Cabinet, Congress, Education, Government, Higher Education, India, Opposition, Parliament, Technical, UGC
Government goes in for reform in education system: Class Xth boards off
The Congress Government, in its second 5 year term, wants to make a start with a bang. As a result, the Government had set an ambitious plan of kicking off many major initiatives in the first 100 days; part of which were some announcements by the education ministry. Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal shocked a large number of politicians and state officials when he advocated for the abolition of the class Xth boards (and many other proposals). He faced criticism for the sudden announcement of such measures, but looks like he has done a lot more networking since that time.
When you look at today’s world, with a huge amount of pressure and load on students, the Class Xth exams are a major contributor. Schools have been known to encourage students to leave or take a non-favorable option in XIth if a student does not do well in the Class Xth board exams. In addition, schools have an additional pre-boards that are used before the boards and which essentially mean that a student can go upto 3-4 months of heavy pressure. In order to reduce this peak pressure somewhat, the Government (which controls the CBSE board, but not state boards) has proposed that the Class Xth board be now optional for students, and they can instead opt in for a comprehensive year-round appraisal system. The year-round system will be valid from the current school year, while the boards becoming optional will happen from the next year (link to article):
Categories: Congress, Development, Education, Reform Tags: Education, Governance, India, Reform, School
Government claims that it will investigate seats for money scam
Image the situation; a private college in a state run by a political party; the college is owned by a member of the same political party who is now also a central minister of the Government of India. The same college demands money for admitting students (and not some small sum, but the sum of Rs. 20 lakhs). A media team plans a sting and shows the administrative officer of one of the colleges (the college is Shree Balaji Medical College owned by Union minister of state for information and broadcasting S Jagathrakshakan); in the other college, the registrar asks for Rs. 40 lakhs for students to be allowed admission into the medical college.
This seems perfectly realistic, inspite of Supreme Court judgments and Government policy, capitation based admission is a reality which the Government and the education ministry is perfectly fine to let happen. After all, for Governments that are able to sniff out the movements of opposition parties through their internal intelligence agencies, how hard would it be to find out which all colleges are charging capitation fees ? But when you consider that colleges are owned by politicians and important people, there is no effort that is going to happen to stop such practices from happening.
