IMPHAL, July 19: A two day national level seminar on “The Employment of European Credit Transfer System in India” was opened today at the Multi-purpose hall of Oriental College, Imphal.
The seminar is being sponsored by the UGC and has been organized by the Oriental College, Imphal in collaboration with the NG College.
Addressing the function, Associate Professor, Dr Kh Aruna Devi department of English, Oriental College said, “The system of higher education in India is both enormous and complex”.
She said it was established in the mid 19th century in the image of British universities.
“Post-Independence, it has acquired a more hybrid form influenced by both the American and the Soviet traditions”, she said.
She said, currently there are more than 375 public and 40 private universities with around 20000 affiliated colleges.
Addressing the seminar, Associate Professor of Physics, ARSD College University of Delhi Dr Vijender Sharma said, “The higher education sector in India has undergone major changes since the adoption of neo-liberal economic policies in the beginning of the 1990s”.
He said, “Neo-liberal economics promotes exploitation, produces inequality, changes economic and government policies to increase the power of corporations and a shift to benefit the upper classes, and deregulates the labour market producing casualisation of labour and greater informal employment”.
In his conclusion, the Associate Professor had said, “The UPA-2 government is changing the entire framework of higher education system in the country without required consultation and debate and with tremendous haste without any regard to opposition of academia and states”.
He said, “With the ever growing strategic relationship with the USA in several fields, this government is also under its pressure and also of other developed countries including UK. These countries are looking for alternative destinations for export of their higher education and do business so that their crisis-ridden higher education systems could be bailed out”.
“The Prime Minister and HRD Minister are already engaged in high level talks with their counterparts in USA and UK in this regard”, he said.
“In the new framework which will facilitate trade in higher education, there will be no social control over higher education institutions and no regulation of admission, fees, content of courses, examination, service conditions of teachers and other employees ignoring larger issues of social justice and academic accountability”, he had said.