HIGHER EDUCATION
Importance 5.1. Though priority must be given to elementary and adult education and the improvement of secondary education, the
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importance of the role and contribution of higher education in national development must be fully recognised.
Relieving Pressure on Higher Education 5.2. The proliferation of colleges and universities with little regard to the need for them or the resources required for sustaining them at acceptable standards is a matter for concern. Measures will have to be devised to relieve pressure on higher education. Vocationalization of Secondary education should help in this process. New recruitment policies and procedures with in built pre-service training programmes and tests appropriate to specific job requirements, will also help to lessen the craze for degrees for securing jobs. The general run of jobs not requiring university education for their performance) should be de-linked from the requirement of a degree.
Facilities for Higher Education 5.3. Facilities for higher education may be expanded through correspondence courses, part-time and own-time studies and by permitting private candidates to appear in university examinations. Great restraint should be exercised in the establishment of new institutions. Admission to institutions of higher learning should be selective. Due safeguards, however, have to be provided to ensure accessibility of these institutions to first-generation learners, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and other disadvantaged groups. Vigorous efforts should be made to improve the quality of higher education.
Under-Graduate Education 5.4. it is preferable that the duration of the undergraduate stage of higher education is three years. This may be followed by courses of post-graduate study and research. Courses of study will be re-structured and made inter-disciplinary so that they can meet the varying requirements of students and also help in social transformation and national development. Participation in constructive programmes with a component of socially
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useful productive work should be made an integral part of the courses of study at the under-graduate stage.
Research 5.5. Efforts will be made to raise the quality of post-graduate education. Universities will be encouraged to undertake fundamental and applied research especially in sciences relevant to the needs of national development in collaboration with national research laboratories, industry and other organisations. The programmes of scientific and technological research should conform to the National Policy on Science and Technology.
Extension Programmes Linking Community with the
Education System 5.6. The university system should assume increasing respon- sibilities for the development of the community and more particularly for the education system as a whole. The Universities should collaborate with the colleges which in turn may work with secondary and elementary schools in the neighbourhood and the entire complex should help to improve the standards of education at all levels. There should be close relationship of mutual services and support between the universities and colleges and the local community. Extension programmes in the universities should have the same status as teaching and research. Vacations should, where necessary, be curtailed and re-scheduled to enable students and teachers to lend a hand in programmes of rural and community development.
Centres of Excellence 5.7. Centres of excellence, whose standards should be comparable to the best in the world, are essential and every effort will be made to promote them.