It appears that over the last eight years, the government has approved 47 private universities mainly on political consideration. According to the UGC reports, 42 private universities have no vice chancellor and are mostly run by acting VCs. Seventy-two have no pro-VC and 52 have no treasurer out of a total of 95. The UGC made no secret that most private universities don’t have enough teachers and properly equipped laboratories and libraries. They run classes with hired teachers from public universities. In our view the government should conduct a survey on what types of universities we need at this moment and then give approval to new universities if needed on the basis of their plan about what kind of manpower they will produce.
General education is no more useful to the country when we need more engineers, technicians and trained workers to create a generation of qualified manpower to run new mills and factories and businesses as the country is moving towards faster growth. The country is now having the biggest number of unemployed graduates to clearly suggest that the new focus on education must shift from creating aimless graduates to skilled manpower for a competitive world.
Looking at the performance of majority of our private universities there is no doubt most of them are misusing their teaching permits while collecting huge tuition fees from students. Some of them are operating in hired buildings with very poor infrastructure. From now on we must say permission to new universities may only be given if they are more technology oriented and not to teach general subjects. It must be mentioned that some private universities are offering standard education and research and some are closer to meet the quality requirement. But majority of existing private universities are struggling to survive.
It is quite dismaying that despite warnings from educationists, the government has been awarding license to open private universities essentially to ruling party men and blessed businessmen without meeting minimum quality requirements.. Many of them are victims of infighting among sponsors. In our view these universities must be given specific time to improve or must be sealed. Overcrowding of private universities will be only self-serving; that must not be encouraged. Education for business can’t be acceptable and handing down license to party men will be similarly damaging to the nation.
