The Hindu Business Line : Working Group proposes step-up in technical education outlay

"There is a need to organise technical education not only in terms of increased enrolment but also with high quality comparable to the best in the world," the report said.

New Delhi June 18 A rational and progressive approach towards achieving the target of 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) for technical education by the end of the Eleventh Plan (2011-12) demands that the total financial outlay for this sector should be Rs 39,402.50 crore, compared to the Tenth Plan (2002-027) allocation of Rs 4,700 crore, the Working Group Report on Technical Education for the 11th Plan has said.

Stating that the CABE (Central Advisory Board on Education) Committee on Financing Higher and Technical Education has recommended that 6 per cent of GDP should be set aside for education, of which one per cent should be earmarked for higher education and 0.5 per cent for technical education, the Working Group has recommended this measure to be implemented in the 11th Plan, particularly in the wake of the long-standing support for this goal since 1966 when the Kothari Commission set this target for education. "There is a need to organise the technical education not only in terms of increased enrolment but also with high quality comparable to the best in the world," the report noted.

In order to marshal resources of this magnitude, the group has laid the accent on building appropriate support arrangements for research, research training and technology transfer and providing support of sufficient scale, flexibility and freedom to world class research teams, besides removing hurdles between disciplines, between programme areas, between academia and industry, between Indian researchers and their colleagues elsewhere in the world and between nations.

Connectivity

It said there is a need to promote connectivity between disciplines, between institutions and between academia and users in industry, commerce and the service sector and the government.

It urged the authorities to involve and goad the industry, reputed family businesses and registered societies with a salutary governance structure in setting up technical institutes/polytechnics

/Industrial Technical Institutes (ITIs). In some cases, the Government could provide the non-recurring funds while the recurring component should be available from other sources, it said.

While ensuring optimal utilisation of resources / facilities / expertise through networking of institutions with research laboratories and industries, the Group asked the authorities to accept funding from industry for short-term product design and development or process-oriented research. It said the growth of science and technology in almost all countries has been spearheaded by government investments in educational institutions of higher learning and R&D laboratories. But the Indian higher education system has been under stress due to sub-optimal and often not-too-well focused investments in R&D. "The investments in R&D in higher education institutions should be an order of magnitude higher than what is done at present and must be far higher than the investments made in all R&D laboratories put together," it said.

Referring to the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) set up in 1945 and later conferred statutory status in 1987 by an Act of Parliament for coordinated development of technical education, promotion of qualitative improvement in relation to quantitative growth and maintenance of norms and standards, the Group said that "rather than having an undue focus on approval of institutions, AICTE needs to put greater emphasis on developmental/promotional activities and turn itself into a facilitator".

AICTE role

It said the AICTE should get "out of the business of inspection visits and focus more on manpower requirements, assessments and forecasting, quality, curriculum design, R&D and innovations, developmental and promotional activities at the faculty as well as institutional levels and programmes for the development of technical education institutions," on the lines of the National Science Foundation of USA.