Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Prof B S Bhatia, Dean, UnitedWorld School of Business

Higher Education in Budget
Discussion at Unitedworld School of Business
Higher education plays an important role in economic growth and social development of the country. As per the report of knowledge commission only 7 percent population from the relevant age group enters higher education mainly because of lack of availability of institutes. Major concern raised by knowledge commission is about the quality of higher education in most of our universities which is much below the desired level. In order to increase the gross enrolment ratio to 15 percent, a network of 1500 universities is required by 2015.
Expanding opportunities for higher education on such a large scale requires vast resources both financial and others. This cannot be achieved by government alone. A model of public private partnership should be followed and where ever possible higher education should be assigned to private players with suitable regulations. It has been proved beyond doubt that the quality of higher education provided by private institutes is much better. Private institutes should be facilitated rather than restricted in the field of higher education. Some suggestions are as follows;
· Spending on education as a percentage of GDP should be increased to 6 percent.
· Service tax which is charged at the rate of 10% from private/autonomous educational institutions at present should be abolished.
· Education should be treated as infrastructure and tax benefit should be made available similar to those available for other infrastructure projects.
· Incentives should be provided to industry to take professional or skilled trainees/apprentices
· Tax benefit should be given on amount spend by an individual on higher education. Loans for higher education should be made affordable by easier terms and lower interest rate.
· Government should allocate more funds for special education for physically and mentally disabled children in all major towns.
· Government should encourage educational research by: (a) providing grants for research even to self-financed colleges and autonomous educational institutions (2) providing reasonable honorarium to research guide for guiding the Ph.D. students

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