Bangalore: Government is planning to crack the
whip against dubious institutions in the higher education
sector by setting up a national accreditation authority that
would ensure certain quality standards.
HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said the proposed authority would
be manned by experts whether it is engineering, medicine, law,
pharmacy or architecture, and not government representatives.
The government wants to be far removed from the processes of
education but not from the objectives of education.
This authority would outsource the job to accreditation
agencies which would evaluate institutions. If they don`t have
minimum benchmarks of quality, they would not be entitled to
run the institutions.
Every higher education institution would be required to
have their website giving all information about it, faculty
and other facilities. If the information provided on the
website was inconsistent with what`s on the ground, it would
be treated as "educational malpractice" which would attract
prosecution.
"It`s a new form of criminal offence for which
institutions and managements would be prosecuted," he said,
delivering the Sir Vithal N Chandavarkar Memorial Lecture on
"Empowering Through Education" at the Indian Institute of
Science here.
Sibal expressed dismay that the present shortfall of
school teachers (at the elementary level) is 12 lakh but noted
that recruitment processes are in the hands of state
governments.
In this context, he lauded the initiative of software
major Wipro which, through its Azim Premji University has
committed to train 50,000 faculty irrespective of the
time-line.
Sibal, who visited Wipro this morning, said the private
university wants to ensure that in every district there were
50 or 100 people who would empower the schools and faculty.
PTI
