OPINION: Pranab for private-public partnership in higher education!

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AARTI DHAR / The Hindu / KORAPUT (ORISSA), July 10, 2011.

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. File photo - AP.

Drawing attention to the challenges of public funding of higher education, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee advocated the need to design ‘tailor-made’ public-private partnership models, albeit with regulatory oversight of the government. He was delivering the first Convocation address of the Central University of Orissa in Koraput on Sunday.

Mr. Mukherjee said the foremost challenge in the higher education sector in India was also to bring about equity and quality. He pointed to the increasing working age population of the country, and felt that the demographic dividend in the country’s favour for the next three decades owing to declining dependency ratio can be leveraged only if our youth are imbibed with education and relevant skills. He expressed the hope that the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) would contribute to the realization of the advantages of the demographic dividend.

Appreciating the performance of the Central University at Koraput, which he felt had started contributing to the long term benefit for the economic development of the region, Mr. Mukherjee commended the efforts of the new University in launching several need-based programmes particularly for tribal and community development.

Globalisation has a very significant impact on India and it was all the more necessary to ensure relevance of higher education in order to attain excellence, said Mr. Mukherjee.

The Vice Chancellor of the Central University of Orissa Dr. Surabhi Banerjee said the perspective plan of the University was going to define its uniqueness. ``It is not going to be yet another university in the multitude of run-of-the-mill academic institutions. It definitely aspires to become a University with a difference which aims at making a difference in the lives of the people.’’

01) As such both Private and Public Educational Institutions have been playing a vital role, independently, in the Indian Education Sector;

02) Will a public-private partnership brings in better efficiencies and inexpensive education together?

03) Given my own observation of the Indian Education, a ppp Education entity would have high inefficiency levels as well as more expensive!

Full Story at,

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2216443.ece