Proactively filling up vacancies in higher education institutions across the country, strengthening digital learning, fast-tracking the revision of Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) scheme and accelerating the process of granting Institute of Eminence (IoE) status to the remaining selected institutions under the scheme are among the major recommendations made by a House panel to the Ministry of Education (MoE).

The recommendations came as part of the parliamentary standing committee on education, women, children, youth, and sports headed by BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar Vivek Thakur in its demand for grants report submitted in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

The committee also recommended that the ministry develop new cooperative mechanisms between the higher educational institutions and industry to find ways to support and strengthen digital education initiatives in the country.

“The committee strongly feels that there is a pressing need to ensure that digital education penetrates even further and recommends that the department should evaluate the schemes under the ‘Digital India e-Learning’ category to bring them in tune with the objectives which call for developing high-quality electronic content in all local languages to cater to the diversity in the country, build suitable infrastructure for virtual training and laboratories along with high-end skill development courses, create guidelines for online/digital education to tackle the digital divide and to make use of technology for integrating the Indian education system,” it said.

It also noted that the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic dampened the demand for funds under HEFA. It recommended expediting the revision of the HEFA scheme and notify it at the earliest to widen the scope for financing under it.

The IoE scheme was launched in 2017 with a major objective to bring about improvement in the global rankings of institutions. The scheme was launched to identify 20 ‘Institutions of Eminence’ (IoE) (10 each from public and private category).

So far, eight public institutions and four private institutions in the country have been granted the status. It is mainly the private institutions which have been left in a limbo over the IoE status.

“The committee notes that efforts at various levels are underway to grant IoE status to remaining two public institutions and five private institutions while one institution has expressed its inability to comply with the conditions of the letter of intent. It, therefore, recommends that the process for granting status of IoEs be accelerated, so that, the remaining institutions also get the IoE status at the earliest,” the report stated.

The panel also recommended increasing the amount under various scholarship programmes, taking into account the real expenses borne by students in view of the fact that most beneficiaries are primarily students from low-income and socially disadvantaged groups.

The committee, noticing that a total of 27,693 posts (including both teaching and non-teaching) are lying vacant across higher education institutions in the country including central universities, IITs, NITs and IIMs among others, said a “proactive” approach was required to filling up these vacancies at the earliest.

“The department must take a proactive approach to bring about a noticeable improvement for monitoring the progress and actions being taken towards filling up of these vacancies in a time-bound manner with permanent faculties as far as possible by the end of 2023. The committee further recommends that special recruitment campaigns should also be undertaken,” the report said.

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