Mumbai, Nov 23: Union human resource development minister murli Manohar Joshi today urged educationists to evolve novel strategies to accommodate the ever increasing new generation of students who would be going in for higher education in the country. Inaugurating the 77th annual meeting of Vice-Chancellors of Association of Indian Universities, Joshi said since higher education contributes to the most significant segment of human development--leaders for the country, it is time for the educationists to work out a new method to handle students' explosion, emerging out of secondary schools to participate in the higher education.
The "Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan" will provide a significant upward thrust in the coming years and more and more children and youth will seek a place in secondary and higher education.
As a democratic government, it will be ethically improper to deny such opportunities and our higher education system must gear up to accommodate the new generation into its fold, he said.

Joshi suggested that since there is not enough space in the colleges across the country, and with the existing number of colleges (12,342 affiliated colleges), a multiple-shift system could be adopted by improving the infrastructure to accommodate more students.
However, we need to carry out a detailed exercise on college mapping to ensure the availability of one college per block, the provision of science education in each of these colleges and programmes in special areas at district level, he added. Bureau Report