In favour of greater autonomy for top institutes: Javadekar

The HRD minister claimed that India spends nearly four per cent of its GDP on education

Reiterating the Centre's commitment towards improving quality of education in the country, Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday assured greater autonomy for top performing educational institutions.

Speaking at the Agenda Aaj Tak event here, the minister said education was not a 'political agenda' but a 'national agenda' and assured that the Centre post-demonetisation has more money to spend on education.

"I want to announce from here that we are in favour of granting greater autonomy to the educational institutions, particularly deemed and private universities. But then to enjoy that autonomy, they will have to be top ranked," said Javadekar.

"The higher the ranking, the greater the autonomy. Top ranking institutes can enjoy as much as 90 per cent autonomy and only 10 per cent regulations. The average universities will have 50:50 and the bad universities will have 90 per cent regulation and ten per cent freedom," he said.

Javadekar attributed lack of infrastructure for research and innovation as well as lack of decent scholarships behind Indian students going offshore for higher studies, and asserted the government was working towards improving the quality of higher education in the country.

"The government has been focussing on how to arrest the outflow of students to foreign institutes. The need is to develop research and innovation infrastructure in our educational institutes and we are doing that in a big way. We are also stressing on enhancing scholarships," Javadekar said.

"The need is also to change the global perception about our higher educational institutes. We are building 20 world class universities and endeavouring to ensure that our higher educational institutes feature among the top ranked institutes in the world," he said.

Javadekar claimed that India spends nearly four per cent of its GDP on education, of which nearly 1.4 per cent is on higher education.

He said the share would go up to six per cent of the GDP in the near future.

"The country is fast changing and with demonetisation eliminating black money and bringing in more money into the system, the government will have more funds to spend on education."

"Education is not a political agenda but a national agenda. We do not politicise education. Our aim is to improve the education system in a mission mode," Javadekar said.