Private universities again drawing flak
When the TIB had highlighted the corruptibility in certain private universities the education ministry raised a hue and cry, going ballistic about the findings. They said it was aimed at denigrating the image of private universities.
Now University Grants Commission (UGC), a body constituted by the government, has come out with detailed inadequacies and poor state of affairs in a good number of private universities. It has found out that majority of the 79 universities run without following rules, and have poor library, laboratory and research facilities. As many as nine universities operate in unauthorised outer campuses.
It's as surprising as it is shocking to know that twenty universities have no vice chancellors and that 61 run without any pro-VC.
We have been consistently emphasising the laudatory role that a select number of private universities have played to cater for higher education comparable in quality to that in some overseas universities. We are proud of them just as we are disappointed by the others which are run purely as commercial ventures. Their professional incompetence and casualness have brought bad name in profiling private universities in general, which is unfortunate and unacceptable.
It's all very good that the UGC has brought the deficiencies of the private universities to the fore. However, this raises a fundamental question about how an authority under whose watch the private universities are supposed to be working did not move to right the wrongs of several private universities.
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