Knowledge Commission is for privatisation of education

Mumbai, Jan 16 (UNI) The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has favoured strongly for not only privatisation of education, but also entry of foreign universities in the country.

The Commission has submitted its report on certain subjects relating to education, including library science and e-governance, before the Centre on January 12. Next year, the Commission will be completing its report on technical education and other related fields of education.

Delivering the fifth H M Trivedi Memorial Lecture, which was held by the Indian Merchant Chambers (IMC) here this evening, Chairman of NKC, Dr Sam Pitroda, said ''By throwing open our education sector to the private sector and allowing some of the world renowned foreign universities we'll be able to check our students going abroad in search of higher education.'' Nearly 80,000 students go to different countries for getting higher education and spends a sum of 4-5 billion USD every year, he said. Sharing his own experience of his recent interaction with the Sterlite Group chairman, Anil Agrawal, he said ''Mr Agrawal wants to spend more than one billion USD on education in the country but his proposal was still pending with the government. He said that five such proposals are also waiting government's clearance.'' The other recommendation made by the Commission is to have 1,500 universities in the country and stopping the trend of having a number of affiliated colleges attached to a particular university.

Replying to a query, he informed that ''as against our proposal for spending a sum of Rs 1,000 crore for making institutional libraries digital ones, the Government has agreed to spend a sum of Rs 100 crore for modernisation of libraries located in some 500 universities of the country''.

UNI