Lost opportunity

The University Grant Commission’s (UGC) latest decision to provide reform grants ranging from $80,000 to $2.5 million to 43 more community colleges, in addition to the 47 community colleges already receiving the grants is a clear wake up call to our public colleges. While 90 community colleges in total will now benefit from the grant on the one hand, six public colleges may have to wash their hands off the benefits that were targeted at them in the beginning when the project was launched in Feb 2007. The UGC decision comes in the face of the failure to transform these public colleges into autonomous ones by Jan 2014, the closing date of the project. The UGC plans to provide reform grants to community colleges under three schemes. Under the first scheme, colleges will receive a maximum of $ 2.5 million. Similarly, under the second and third schemes, colleges will get up to $ 400,000 and $ 80,000, respectively. To be eligible for the grant, community colleges will have to meet a set of standards, ranging from a minimum of 25 percent passouts to producing at least 20 graduates every year. UGC has the World Bank´s nod for the same.



The multi-million dollar Second Higher Education Project (SHEP), which is now in shambles, aimed to enhance quality and relevance of higher education and research through a set of incentives for promoting effective management and financial sustainability of academic institutions; and to improve access for academically qualified under-privileged students, including girls, Dalits and educationally disadvantaged Janajati to higher education through financial assistance and enhanced capacity of higher  secondary schools. But clearly neither of the two objectives could be achieved owing to failure of the colleges to perform up to the mark. Unfortunately, this has happened due to internal discord between students and teachers who were divided over trivial issues relating to the autonomy project.



Also, the school handover campaign too has been a total failure as many teachers believed that the government would stop funding their salaries once the colleges become autonomous. This is a lost opportunity and a hopeless situation for the colleges which probably will never be fully autonomous as the UGC itself has stated. The UGC on its part too, should ensure proper implementation of important projects such as SHEP. It cannot shy away from its responsibility while blaming the colleges as the failure of the public colleges boils down to the conclusion that UGC too failed to ensure the success of the project, which if implemented properly could have benefited the youth immensely, especially the underprivileged. Not to forget, the UGC has been facing a leadership crisis for seven months now with the government yet to appoint its chairman and member-secretary. Even as the UGC has now decided to give the grants to the community colleges, it is already getting late. It must promptly ask for proposals and make the announcement at the earliest so that the community colleges do not lose out this time around.

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