We need to free up our educational system - Sibal

Kolkata: Stating that the education system in Indianeeds to undergo a thorough change, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal on Saturday said his ministry would work towards freeing it up in the coming years.

"We need to free up the education system. We require internal freedom to allow the universities to grow in India. We intend to change this system," Sibal said at University-Industry Council Symposium, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) at Bengal Engineering and Science University (BESU) here.

"I think the education system should not be so static. But in our country it has been so just because of the faculties we have in oureducational institutions.

"There are various new educational models emerging in India. And I can say there's no better place than India in the world where people can get such enormous human capital to build their intellectual assets," he said.

Sibal said that only 12 out of 100 children in India get college education and the central government has set a target to increasing this figure to 30 by 2020. The global average of this statistics is 27 while in Europe it is 15-17 and in African nations, this tally is just six out of every hundred students, he added.

He also said that the HRD ministry would issue a notice for every university andeducational institutions across the country to develop their own websites, to bring transparency in the system and enable people to know about the faculty and other infrastructure available in that particular institute.

The minister said there would be a huge surge in the number of doctorate and fellowship programmes in the country in next five years.

"But few state governments are opposing the proposed uniformity of the education system saying this would hamper the diversity of the standard," he said.

Pointing out that there is a dearth of universities of excellence in the country to meet industry's requirement, Sibal said altogether 14 innovation universities would come up in next five years.

He said to build proper infrastructure in various universities was equally important to carry out research and development activities.

"For that industry players must come forward to promote more industry-university collaborations in the near future," Sibal said. IANS