Need for reorientation of university system: Sibal

"There is no point having a university with 800 affiliated colleges, all that the university does is to take examinations and asks for money and no research is done. We must reorient administratively our system," he said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit here.

Sibal, who had initiated several reform measures during his tenure, was particularly critical about the standard of education imparted in the state universities, which together constitute 85 per cent of the total universities in the country.

To improve the standard and ensure quality of education, Sibal said unless pending legislations pertaining to accreditation and checking malpractices are passed in Parliament, "you are going to do great disservice to the nation".

Apparently referring to tepid response to the 2G spectrum auction, the Telecom Minister said, "the growth is not going to be contributed by out of what you get from sale of spectrum...Growth is going to be contributed by how much you invest in education in this country."

He said the challenge for investment is going to come from the increased demand for colleges and institutes by 2020 when gross enrolment ratio is expected to touch 30 per cent.

"We will have to either set-up new institutions of the order of 40,000 to 50,000 colleges to serve increasing demand and 6,000-8,000 universities to be able to serve that demand. We could also have to restructure our present education sector to be able to cater to needs of the growing demand," he said.