India's higher education sector over-regulated: Niti Aayog

India's higher education sector is over-regulated and needs a complete shake up, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Friday.

"Over-regulation needs to be completely scrapped. We should be facilitators instead of being inspectors. We are working to create an easy and simple regulatory framework," said Kant, releasing the 100th issue of "Careers360", a higher education magazine here.

The Human Resource Development Ministry, the Niti Aayog and the University Grants Commission have set up a committee to look into the matter, a statement said.

Kant said that many of the problems relating to the sector stemmed from the fact that education was termed as not-for-profit.

Transparency would be ushered in once changes were made to the policy framework whereby institutions could make decent profit which could be ploughed back to the sector, he said.

"There is no such thing called 'not-for-profit' as such. The objective should be to generate profit, which could be re-invested," he said.

Kant added that India needs to expand the higher education sector for which there is a need for good institutions.

"The Prime Minister himself is taking interest in creating 20 world class universities, 10 each in private and public sector.

"India must create an ecosystem, which should be able to a attract vast numbers of students," he said.

--IANS

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