MEDIA RELEASE 3 EDUCATION SHOULD BE WITH CENTRAL GOVERNMENT FORMER CHAIRMAN UGC

Prof. Arun Nigavekar, Former Chairman, University Grants Commission (UGC) today stressed the need to put +3 education exclusively in the domain of the central government.

He was delivering the 20^th Prof. G. Ram Reddy Memorial Lecture on the topic “India needs to go for disruptive innovation in higher education sector” at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi.

Prof. Nigavekar emphasized that the new government has the opportunity and absolute power to take a proactive approach. The central government should bring all chief ministers, education ministers and bureaucrats to a single table and discuss with them a fundamental question : Is it essential to continue with the 10+2+3 pattern that we adopted decades ago? In the primary, secondary and higher secondary sphere, each state should have the liberty to decide and implement policies that they deem best. But if we talk about ‘knowledge linked economy’ it would be pragmatic and positive strategy to put +3 educations exclusively in the domain of the central government.

Former Chairman, UGC added that state governments only bear the financial load connected with payment of teachers and supporting staff salaries. Thus, it does not have money to provide for the academic growth and cannot support innovative delivery of education methods if any college or university desires to take such steps. Development fund to all affiliated colleges and universities come from MHRD and UGC. So making the +3 domain as a non-concurrent entity would make a miraculous change in a country as big as India.

Thus India as a whole would have uniformity in structures. We are stuck in annual, semester and mini-modular structure for decades. We have dared not to touch the credit based modular arrangement and have never smoothly used collection of credit points as a measure of assessment for judging students knowledge base. It is the sensitivity and ability  to learn from application-oriented experiences since it is critical in terms  of job opportunities. In plain language,+3 have no meaning. A brilliant student may collect points that fetch a degree speedily, whereas a mid-level but hard working youth can take more time in doing the same. However, in a given profession, they may equally do an excellent task. Nowadays, this is the accepted education structure globally.

On this Occasion a booklet of Prof.G.Ram Reddy captioned “A Visionary” was released by Prof. Nigavekar.