should be ruled out as it would involve a large and avoidable capital expenditure and delay the entire process of the improvement of higher education. The first step in the programme would, therefore, be for the UGC to select, as soon as possible, from amongst the existing uni- versities, about six universities (including one of the IITs and one agricultural university) for development as major universities.

11.27 A university selected for such development will have to do several things. It must make an effort to recruit students suffi- ciently qualified and endowed mentally to benefit from the superior training to be given. It must get together as quickly as possible an intellectually distinguished group of teachers who will be able to provide the requisite training and make valuable research contribu- tions. And it should make ail effort to provide adequate facilities and satisfactory conditions of work. We shall examine these three essential conditions briefly.

11.28 Recruitment of Students. At present our students tend, by and large, to be recruited locally or on a State-wise basis and except for a few all-India institutions, the small number of students of superior capacity are usually swamped by the large numbers of those who are not well prepared for intensive higher education. In such a situation, many of the good students lose their motivation for intel- lectual work and neither fulfil their own potentialities nor stimulate one another adequately as they normally should in a good institution. They are not numerous and powerful enough to offset the downward drag of the uninterested or apathetic students, and instead of pulling the others upward, they themselves tend to become submerged in the mass. A major university of the kind we contemplate should have a 'critical mass' of students of outstanding capacity and promise. This is possi- ble only if they are recruited on an all-India basis. We, therefore, recommend that a national scholarship scheme combined with a placement programme should be organized-the scholarships being tenable only at the major universities or at others where well-developed centres of advanced study (to be discussed later) exist or in their approved constituent or affiliated colleges. The amount of these scholarships should cover all costs of university education, e.g., tuition and other university fees, maintenance, and allowance for textbooks and a small allowance for personal expenses.

11.29 Each major university should be assigned a number of scholarships for the undergraduate stage which will provide it with enough talented students for its postgraduate classes. The actual number may be decided for each major university by the UGC from year to year, in view of all the factors involved. Of these scholarships, about half should be from outside the area of the university and half for students

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from inside its area. To avoid loss of time, a beginning may be made by making use of the existing examinations conducted by the universi- ties and the State Boards of Secondary Education supplemented by other data as recommended elsewhere. As far as possible, students should be selected from all the States and Union Territories. Each university may, if it considers it necessary, administer a special test for the purpose or all the major universities may jointly organize a national test as the IITs are doing at present. The scholarships must be continued at the postgraduate level where smaller numbers are involved but the difficult problem of adjusting the standards of different universities has to be tackled.

11.30 Recruitment of Staff. In building up a major universi- ty, it will be necessary to conduct an energetic search throughout the country for outstanding and promising young persons for its reaching and research staff. We recommend that each department or faculty should have a specially appointed personnel advisory committee, which would work in close collaboration with the appointing authorities of the university, to find faculty members in fields in which it is already distinguished or in which it seeks distinction. It should have, as a major responsibility, the search for the most outstanding and promising Ph. D.s, M.A.s and M.Sc.s, and even brilliant recent graduates. The great merit of such committees lies in their informal- ity and freedom from rigid procedures and this should be fully en- sured. They should scrutinize the lists of Indians abroad and the candidates available within the country and the search for staff, instead of being limited to the State or the region, should be made nation-wide and, in a sense, world-wide. They should actively seek such candidates for appointments and, wherever necessary, offer them advance increments. What is even more important, they should be assured of research opportunities, opportunities for study leave and the possibility of achieving professional excellence. There should be room for flexibility in the appointments and promotions. The UGC should place at the disposal of each university a contingency fund which may be used to provide more attractive salaries to persons of exceptional promise and performance. However, the tendency to use it simply to reward or promote persons who have passed the peak of their creative powers should be strongly resisted. Moreover, it should be open to a university, oil the advice of the Head, to reduce the number of posts for lecturers or readers and to use the money so saved to appoint additional professors where this is justified. Care should also be taken not to appoint men on an emergency basis. For instance, the appointing authorities should never say: 'This post has to be filled; and, we hope, this person will be good enough'. It is better to leave a post

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unfilled or to make some temporary arrangements than to fill it with a person whose main qualification is availability. It is only 'inspired men-found, rewarded and planted firmly in the classroom-who can and undoubtedly will give ... our (universities and) colleges a new lustre, built on the mysterious moments when mind confronts mind and a student suddenly senses the power and richness of his own intellect. *'130

11.31 Centres of Advanced Study. Partly as a preparation and partly as a consequence of the establishment of these major universi- ties, it is necessary to strengthen and expand the UGC programme of the establishment of centres of advanced study. One way of doing this will be to establish 'clusters' of advanced centres in some of the universities as has been done, for instance, in Delhi University. They will add strength to, and enrich, one another and be specially helpful in promoting interdisciplinary research. In other cases, a cluster of centres may not be possible and we may have to begin with a single Centre. While these centres will be mainly concerned with postgraduate teaching and research, every care should be taken to see that they do not become isolated from the rest of the university and do not develop a kind of academic snobbishness towards other depart- ments or undergraduate teaching. In fact, they are essentially meant to help in raising the standard of the departments and the university as a whole. We would recommend the establishment of about fifty such centres, including sonic in modern Indian languages over the next five to ten years: At least one of them should concentrate on developing an interdisciplinary approach to education. The other areas which are not covered in the scheme at present are agriculture, engineering, medicine and modern Indian languages. We recommend that the scheme should be extended to these also.

11.32 Provision of Facilities. We need hardly emphasize that it will be necessary to provide adequate facilities and satisfactory conditions of work for this critical mass of gifted students and teachers assembled in the major universities. The programme need not necessarily be very costly, especially if the emphasis is on austerity and utility rather than on ostentation and luxury. In fact, we look forward to the major universities giving a lead in reducing expendi- ture on buildings and equipment.

11.33 Some General Suggestions. We would like to make the following suggestions regarding the selection, periodical review and management of the centres of advanced study:

130 Times Educational Supplement.

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(1) The administration of a Centre, subject to the overall supervision of the university's Executive Coun- cil, should be the responsibility of its director as- sisted by a small but representative committee of his colleagues. This should consist of all the professors in the department and a number of readers and lecturers elected by the staff. We suggest that it might meet at least three times a year to discuss the academic pro- gramme of the department and related matters, its pro- ceedings being circulated to the faculty of the Academic Council. In fact, the setting up of such departmental committees would be useful in all departments, whether it has a Centre of advanced study or not.

(2) A Centre once established should not be taken to mean that it will continue to be there irrespective of its work and performance. The privilege of being a centre of advanced study must, as it were, be continual- ly earned and deserved.

(3) The original selection of a university department as a Centre should be made on the basis of the quality and extent of work already done by it, its reputation for good teaching, its contribution to research and its potentiality for further development. The process of selection should be so devised that it will the confidence of the universities and the academic communi- ty generally.

(4) Each Centre of advanced study should have, say, once in three to five years, a visiting committee, consisting of outstanding Indian and, where possible and necessary, foreign experts who will conduct a review and appraisal of the accomplishments of the Centre. These visiting committees should not include members of the Centre under review and they must not hesitate to be outspokenly critical where such criticism is called for. Above all, they must concentrate on offering positive suggestions for the improvement of teaching and research within the Centre.

11.34 Extension of Excellence. Steps should be taken to ensure that the standards of the centres of advanced study, whether in the major or other universities, are extended, as early as possible, to other departments and to affiliated colleges. For this purpose, we make the following suggestions:

(1) The centres within a university should function in close collaboration with other centres and departments which are not centres of advanced study and measures should be adopted to involve the entire staff of the university in functioning as an intellectually effective community.

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(2) The major universities should constantly strive to enlarge the area of their excellence. For this purpose, they might be given a grant in proportion to the number of centres they already possess, to be used for the purpose of raising other departments within the univer- sity to their level. Such grants, given in the first instance, for five years for what we might call 'aspir- ant centres' should be used for the recruitment of adequate staff and the acquisition of equipment and books. They may be renewed for a second fiveyear period if the progress is satisfactory.

(3) Centres for advanced study should seek to bring the relevant teachers of their affiliated colleges into closer contact with their work. We suggest that the better qualified and more interested teachers of the affiliated colleges should be encouraged to attend staff and postgraduate seminars of the centre. *131 Opportuni- ties for research within the framework of the centre should be provided for college teachers if they are judged to be qualified for the purpose and their re- search schemes are approved. They should have the privilege of using the facilities of the Centre to supplement the resources of their colleges. Study leave should be permitted for this purpose and, where the college cannot afford to pay the teacher's salary, the expenditure may be met out of the funds of the Centre. It should also be possible to make available, to the major universities, specially earmarked grants for the upgrading of their colleges out of the funds allocated by the UGC for the improvement of colleges. If, in spite of all the guidance and assistance provided, the colleges fail to improve and to produce the desired results, the universities should seriously consider the possibility of using their powers to disaffiliate them.

11.35 Financial Support. It is obvious that the development of these major universities, as indicated above, will require consid- erable investment of funds in capital expenditure and the running costs will also be heavy. It is essential that the expenditure re- quired for their development-both capital and recurring-should be placed at the disposal of the UGC by the Central Government.

IMPROVEMENT OF OTHER UNIVERSITIES AND AFFILIATED COLLEGES

11.36 Side by side with the development of these major uni- versities and centres of advanced study, measures must also be adopted to ensure

131 This privilege should also be extended to postgraduate and advanced third-year undergraduate students of these affiliated col- leges.

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that the excellence generated in them is gradually extended to other universities and affiliated colleges so that standards in the entire system of higher education are upgraded in due course. It is to the discussion of this second part of the programme for the improvement of higher education that we now turn.

11.37 Teachers for Higher Education. One of the important contributions which the major universities can make to the development of the other universities and affiliated colleges, as pointed out earlier, is to provide them with teachers of quality. Steps have to be taken to ensure this and for this purpose, we make the following proposals:

(1) Every effort should be made to induce talented students from the universities to Join the teaching profession and to place a majority of them in universi- ties and colleges, other than their own, so that they can help to raise standards. The UGC should maintain a central clearing-house agency for the purpose and supply the data about these young scholars to universities and colleges and supply them with information about avail- able jobs.

(2) With a view to facilitating the recruitment of outstanding persons to the teaching profession, the UGC should sponsor a scheme for instituting a number of fellowships for the purpose. The fellowships should be at three levels-lecturers, readers and professors. Outstanding persons, who may otherwise be lost to the profession, should be granted these fellowships and seconded to work in suitable departments of universi- ties, care being taken to see that they are appointed against permanent posts as early as possible.

(3) The universities and affiliated colleges should be encouraged, so far as possible, to pre-select their new teachers and attach them to the major universities for about a year during which period they will come into contact with some outstanding teachers in their own and allied fields, will receive orientation towards their chosen profession and perhaps study schemes and tech- niques of research adopted there.

In course of time, as the graduates of the major universities and centres of advanced study find appointments in the other universities and colleges, they will carry over their traditions of work and schol- arship to their colleges and it is likely that they will be more actively receptive to the new ideas emanating from their universities and more disposed to enter into an intellectual dialogue with them. The influence of the major universities will thus pass into other sectors of higher education and help in raising standards.

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11.38 This process of extending the standards of the major universities should be fostered by the UGC by adopting, amongst oth- ers, the following devices: