Sisodia Questions Autonomy for Colleges Clause, Raises Concern Over Fake Degree Risk

Giving autonomy to colleges will increase the risk of fake degrees as expressed by the Delhi Government Education Minister, Mr Manish Sisodia. He said this expressing his concerns that granting autonomy to colleges may have.

The minister of AAP cabinet said this after attending a meeting on the New Education Policy (NEP) Draft with HRD Ministry’s Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). He raised questions regarding the proposal of granting autonomy to colleges which function under a university. He said that there are suggestions to give colleges autonomy in the NEP Draft. Under this suggestion, the colleges which have hardly 200 students can issue their own degrees. As the country is already finding a solution to deal with the fake-degree problems, this will complicate the issue more by giving colleges the right to issue their own degrees.

Sisodia also expressed his disagreement with the clause which proposes having private school education boards. According to him, the creation of the private school education boards will lead to deterioration of quality education in the foundation level education in the country.

Many colleges under the Delhi University (DU) were advocating for their autonomy. Some of them have also prepared their documents for the application.

In 2017, DU officials approached 6 colleges for autonomy. They are, Hindu College, Shri Ram College of Commerce, St Stephen’s College, Hansraj College, Sri Venkateswara College and PGDAV college.

St. Stephens College also passed their documents for autonomy but it was found later that there are some amendments to be made in the Delhi University statuses and the whole process was scrapped as no colleges applied for autonomy after that.

Also Read:IIT Delhi writes to MHRD for Autonomy for IITs like IIMs

Sisodia appreciated the education policy as he thought it has a positive vision to reform the education system in India but he also stated that the NEP Draft lacks the roadmap of achieving the target. State education ministers and their representatives, vice-chancellors of universities, heads of autonomous organisations, HRD secretaries for higher and school education Mr R Subrahmanyam and Rina Ray along with senior central and state governments officials attended the meeting with the minister of Human Resource Development (HRD) Mr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank.

As per Sisodia, the NEP Draft is “highly regulated and poorly funded.” He said that this policy will add more rules and regulations to the previous policy rather than simplifying it. He felt that despite having some positive areas, some sectors are neglected in the New Education Policy including the roadmap to achieve their targets.

Also Read:11% drop in Engineering admissions in India raises concerns

Sisodia proposed to allocate at least 6% of the total GDP of the country for the cause of higher education. According to him, if there is no law to bound the governments to allocate 6% of the GDP for education, the governments will not follow it which is already affecting the education sector adversely.

Also reflecting on the quality of education in government schools, Sisodia put forward his opinion on the quality up-gradation of government schools. He said that the private schools must be just another option at par with the government ones. He said as much as 95% of Indian students are not getting a quality education. He expressed some of his valid concerns over the new policies as mentioned in the draft.

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