A parliamentary panel on Tuesday made a number of recommendations to the Union ministry of education including expediting the revision of Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) scheme, accelerating process of granting Institute of Eminence (IoE) status to remaining selected institutions under the scheme, and taking proactive approach towards filling up vacancies in higher education institutions across the country.
The parliamentary standing committee on education, women, children, youth and sports, in its demand for grants report submitted in the Rajya Sabha, also recommended that the ministry develop new cooperative mechanisms between the higher educational institutions and industry to find ways to support and strengthen digital education initiatives in the country.
Highlighting that the delay in disbursal of funds under HEFA, the committee noted that as on December 31, 2022, projects worth ₹46,700.03 crore were approved by HEFA for which a loan amount of ₹35,253.18 crore has been sanctioned and ₹16,013.79 crore has actually been disbursed.
Under the HEFA scheme, higher education institutions get 10-year loans for infrastructural development. The scheme was launched in 2017 to enable India’s premier educational institutions to excel and reach the top in global rankings by financing and building world class infrastructure.
In its response, the ministry cited that the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic hampered the process, and also informed the committee the HEFA scheme is under renewal.
Even as the committee agreed that the pandemic has affected the demand for loan since the construction activities were closed and educational institutions were not in position to undertake new projects which resulted in approval of loans worth ₹35,253.18 crore, so far, falling short of the government’s target, it said that the union ministry of education should undertake “sincere efforts to sanction more loans to mobilize the resources at the fullest, ensure speedy disbursal of sanctioned loans and to achieve targets in a time bound manner during 2023-24”.
“The Committee further recommends to expedite the revision of the HEFA scheme and notify it at the earliest to widen the scope for financing under HEFA,” it said.
In case of the IoE scheme, which was launched in 2018 with an objective of enabling at least 20 higher education institutions in India to have world class academic and research facilities, the committee recommended the ministry to accelerate the process of granting status in case of the identified eligible institutions.
So far, 12 institutes, eight public and four private, have been declared as the Institute of Eminence, even as the process is pending in case of the remaining eight.
The committee said that it has noted that efforts at various levels are underway to grant IoE status to the remaining two public institutions and five private institutions, “while one institution has expressed its inability to comply with the conditions of the letter of intent”.
“The Committee recommends that the process for granting status of IoEs be accelerated, so that the remaining institutions also get the IoE status at the earliest. The Committee also directs that a status note on each of the two public institutions, five private institutions which are being considered for IoE status be placed before the Committee for its perusal,” the panel said.
Raising concern over the existing vacancies in higher education institutions, the panel recommended to the ministry to take proactive efforts and fill them with permanent faculties as far as possible by the end of 2023. “The Committee further recommends that special recruitment campaigns should also be undertaken,” it said.
According to the data submitted by the ministry in Parliament last week, over 11,000 teaching posts are lying vacant in higher education institutions, including central universities, across the country.
Meanwhile, to attract more foreign students to Indian universities, the panel recommended that the higher education department of the ministry through the University Grants Commission (UGC) should issue guidelines for universities pertaining to introduction of courses on Indian heritage and culture such as Vedic mathematics, Yoga and Ayurveda.
“It will result in an increase in the enrolment for foreign and domestic students keen to unravel and unfurl the reservoir of hidden knowledge in this ancient paradigm of learning that may eventually lead to improvement of world rankings of our institutions as well,” the committee said.