Resources
Explore this section to look at the rich repository of resources compiled and generated in-house by RRCEE. It includes curriculum materials, research articles, translations, and policy documents, including commission reports, resources for teachers, select articles from journals and e-books. These all are collated under in user friendly categories, with inter-sectional tags. These resources are both in Hindi and English and cover a wide range of topics.
Decoding Access
Access to higher education has been a long-standing policy concern in India. Reservation for different social groups at the central and state levels has been a typical policy response. With the implementation of reservation for OBCs in the centrally aided higher education institutions, the debate on reservation has picked up again. Among other things, the policy of reservation in higher education is based on the premise that participation of persons from the reserved category is uniformly low and reservation would result in significantly higher participation.
Learning to work
Much of higher education is now seen as instrumental – as training rather than preparation. The focus is more on learning to work rather than learning to learn.
Regulating the private sector
Formal modern education in India gained ground only in the 19th and the early part of the last century, mainly through non-governmental effort. It is, therefore, not surprising that private institutions comprised a considerable part of the sector at the turn of independence, more so in higher education. The non-governmental providers of higher education (mostly in the form of charitable trusts and societies) were arguably impelled by a variety of motives, but principally these were non-pecuniary in nature.
The supply mix
The past quarter century has seen a massive expansion in higher education worldwide and especially in developing countries. Tertiary education is a rapidly growing service sector enrolling more than 80 million students worldwide and employing about 3.5 million people. Demand pressures have been acute, the result of a population bulge in the relevant age group, increasing enrolment in secondary education, increasing incomes (and with it the capacity to pay), and rising wage premiums accruing from higher education.
Turning around public providers
Knowledge has come to occupy centre-stage in the development process with the realization that a significant new relationship has emerged between knowledge and the economy. It is increasingly being recognized that countries with the capacity to generate new knowledge and skilled human power are likely to have a comparative edge in attaining high economic growth and sustaining their growth momentum over those that do not. India is no exception to this widespread and growing global belief.
Education and value
Values may be said to have their home in the human world. Of course, things have value for creatures other than humans. Animals seek out things, among other things care for their own kind, and for their young ones. And, it may be said that such behaviour shows that for animals too the world consists of things which have value and others which have no or negative value. But animals do not regard things as valuable or not valuable; they do not evaluate or make judgments of value.
इसीलिए तो बड़े जीव मॉस नहीं खाते
Reforming education for India
An unlikely revolution is in the offing in the realm of Indian higher education. The contemporary design of increasing the number of colleges, universities and other institutes combined with the emphasis on an economically relevant education might just be able to wrench our system of education out of its present torpor. There is a catch, however. This is not the first time that efforts are being made to either enlarge the demographic canvass of education, or to make education economically relevant, practical and directly related to social concerns.
Towards a legitimate role for foreign institutions
The Indian system of higher education is in a state of decline, primarily due to the adverse effects of its regulatory structure. The participation of foreign universities, while not a panacea for all of the system’s ailments, offers an avenue for easing some of the pressures building up within it. Historically, foreign participation in the sector has had an unimpressive record and has faced numerous functional and ideological barriers. However, of late there is a discernible dissonance in the public discourse on this subject, particularly from within the government and its agencies.