Notes on Education

O ver the past five decades human population has increased hugely to touch a near seven billion now. As a consequence, there is a huge pressure on both urban and rural lands accessible by basic infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water. Humans are devising ways to manage with less and less land for their life and activities. The pressure is also influencing educational institutions that have to do with reduced land availability. Nevertheless, certain minimum requirements still exist for land for different types of educational institutions ranging from kindergarten to university. This author has written about such land requirement before for separate type of educational institutions. The present note summarizes all these findings in a single comprehensive table. An affiliated college is one that prepares students for a university level examination but does not have authority to grant university degrees on its own for which it affiliates itself to a university. A...

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...