Some recommendations of Kaw Committee implemented: govt

A few recommendations of the M K Kaw Committee on the present status of AICTE and how to restructure and reorganise it for better performance have already been implemented, Lok Sabha was informed today.
HRD Minister Smriti Irani said the recommendations of the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) review committee were discussed at a meeting of the experts in June and some of them were implemented based on the opinions obtained from experts and the public.
The Ministry has launched National Institutional Ranking Framework on September 29 to empower a large number of Indian institutions to participants in the global ranking and create a significant impact national and internationally. This framework outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country.

Irani said, in case of vocational education, all technical institutions have been an active participation in adopting the choice based credit system which allows transfers of credit between institutions and universities.
She said the Ministry is formulating SWAYAM, a platform to deliver high quality Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) courses free of cost covering all subjects from the school to higher education level, including the technical education.
The recommendations of the Kaw Committee include: AICTE should be converted into a constitutional autonomous apex authority, it may function as a facilitating mentoring agency rather than regulatory body and should focus attention on research, innovation, business startups and patenting.

It has also recommended that third party rating should be used as the fulcrum of regulations. AICTE should improve the functioning of the sub-standard technical institutions with the help of senior faculty drawn from higher technical institutions.
Among the recommendations are that there should be a provision for undergraduate students to undergo internship on the job training with industry and others.