State public universities grappling with school shortages, poor infrastructure: Niti Aayog

NEW DELHI: State public universities (SPUs), which enrol 81% of India’s larger schooling college students, are grappling with extreme school shortages and outdated infrastructure, affecting educational excellence and analysis output.
A coverage report by Niti Aayog, Increasing High quality Larger Training Via SPUs, launched Monday, highlights that over 40% of school positions stay vacant, and solely 10% SPUs have well-equipped analysis services, considerably impacting studying outcomes.
Regardless of these shortcomings, SPUs stay India’s most important larger schooling establishments, making certain inexpensive and inclusive schooling for over 3.25 crore college students. To handle these points, the report recommends elevating public funding in larger schooling to six% of GDP, implementing performance-based funding, and granting larger autonomy to SPUs to enhance governance and analysis capability.
SPUs, which function the spine of India’s larger schooling sector, are scuffling with outdated infrastructure and inadequate analysis services, limiting their capacity to provide impactful educational work. The report warns that entry to digital assets stays a problem, with solely 32% of SPUs having absolutely practical digital libraries, making it tough for college students and school to entry international analysis databases.
The report highlights that over 40% of school positions stay vacant in SPUs, resulting in an unfavourable student-teacher ratio of 30:1, in comparison with the beneficial 15:1. In consequence, college students obtain restricted educational mentorship and analysis steering, affecting each their studying outcomes and employability. “SPUs should prioritise school recruitment and retention methods. With out ample educating employees, the objective of bettering educational requirements can’t be achieved,” states the report.
The report notes that tuition charges in SPUs are, on common, 60% decrease than these in non-public establishments, making larger schooling extra accessible to college students from socially and economically deprived teams (SEDGs).
To revitalise SPUs, the report proposes a multi-pronged reform technique. It requires public funding in larger schooling to be raised to at the very least 6% of GDP, in step with Nationwide Training Coverage 2020 suggestions. It additionally suggests performance-based funding fashions to incentivise analysis, larger autonomy for SPUs in decision-making, and stronger academia-industry linkages to reinforce graduate employability. Moreover, initiatives resembling One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme, which gives free entry to over 13,000 international analysis journals, ought to be expanded to profit all SPUs.
The report underscores that govt faculties, significantly these affiliated with SPUs wrestle with accreditation on account of excessive NAAC prices, proscribing their entry to high quality enchancment funds. Moreover, bureaucratic inefficiencies delay curriculum updates & school recruitment, affecting educational high quality.