The Vice-Chancellors (V-Cs) of state and central universities from across the country on Saturday unanimously supported the semester system at a two-day conference in the Capital.
This delighted Union human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal, who has firmly backed Delhi University V-C's decision to implement the semester system despite vociferous protests from teachers.
Some departments in DU, such as history and sociology, have continued to protest even as the university has gone ahead and introduced the system in the department of commerce and is in the process of doing so in political science and economics departments.
Sibal said the semester system would pave the way for more reforms in the higher education sector, such as the credit system of assessment that would ensure greater flexibility and mobility for students.
He also called for "normbased" funding for institutions and not a block grant from the Centre, as is the practice. "It is time the central government should not be deciding what individual universities need to spend on. It is for the universities to decide what they want to spend it on," the minister said at the conference that began Friday.
At the same time, he emphasised the significance of different levels of funding needed for different institutions as all universities do not have the same degree of financial requirement.
Sibal called for the need to develop standards for universities to be able to give affiliation.
Terming it their "biggest problem", he said "there are no standards for affiliation". At present, there are universities which have hundreds of colleges affiliated to them.
Professor Ved Prakash, chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC), too, stressed on the need to limit the number of colleges affiliated to every university to between 40 and 50.
He also supported Sibal's call for "norm-based" funding - firstly, mandatory norms for minimum substantive grants to all universities, then maintenance grants to all universities based on transparent and objective criteria, and finally, performance- inked incentive grants to be given to institutions based on stipulated indicators.
In fact, he proposed that to incentivise reforms and performance, colleges, universities and institutions should be provided additional funding by the UGC and the HRD ministry. This would help in achieving global standards in research and teaching, he contended.
On Friday, Sibal had admitted that "political influence" in the appointment of V-Cs was damaging higher education in India.
"Vice-chancellors are appointed at the instance of the political establishment. This must end," he said. He also condemned the frequent dharnas and strikes by protesting teachers.
"In no other country of the world do teachers go on strikes and dharnas," Sibal said.
"My suspicion is our academia has been wallowing in the past... you need to get out of that to create a future," he told the V-Cs.
Sam Pitroda, the PM's advisor on public information infrastructure and innovation, also lambasted the government for the slow progress on higher education reforms. "I'm sick of discussions and debates. We should act now; nothing has progressed in the last five years," he said.
Pitroda, who as the National Knowledge Commission head laid out the blueprint for education reforms, felt the HRD ministry's proposal to carry out a higher education survey will further delay the reform process.
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