Notes on Education

Faculty Subsequent to permitting private players to enter the higher educational arena, over the last decade there has been a proliferation of educational institutions in India. It is a profitable business and many an enterprising shopkeeper, hotel owner, primary or high school owner, politician etc. has jumped into the business. It may be imagined the resulting quality of such private education cannot be of a very high quality. Hopefully this is only a preliminary situation and the scenario will improve in future. Innovative regulation would be required to improve quality. This is what the present series of notes is about. The arenas of education that private players have entered are the most profitable ones such as engineering and management education. With the increase of educational institutions a serious shortage of qualified faculty has emerged in areas such as engineering. This has led the regulating authorities to lower the required qualifications of faculty to an insidiously l

Size An institutional institution begins with land. An adequate amount of land is necessary not just for the initial requirements of the institution but also for its future growth. Universities in particular can be long lasting institutions that can last for hundreds of years. Therefore even if a new university does not have much infrastructure to start with it has a potential to grow in future if it comes on adequate amount of land. Presently regulations exist that prescribe that a new university may be established on as little as thirty acres of land. This is on the low side. Such a university may begin its initial work on this much land but it has no future. It may be mentioned that it is also not possible to enhance activities by procuring land elsewhere in future since the land assets must be continuous. It is also not easy or economical to discard old buildings and move on to a new campus. A more serious lacuna in the present regulations is that the land requirements are specifie