A government-appointed panel has suggested launching online higher education courses, a step experts said would not only widen access to knowledge but also check irregularities in distance learning. Apart from permission to universities and deemed universities to offer courses through the Internet, the committee has recommended that the government set up a Distance Education Council of India (DECI) as regulator. Fourteen open universities and 172 other institutions now offer distance education to...

October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses. However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic...

The recent estimates of employment and unemployment from the 66th round (2009-10) of the National Sample Survey (NSS) belie any hopes that the growth of the Indian economy between 2004-05 and 2009-10 has been inclusive. Employment has expanded by only a million jobs during this period. Not only is this lowest ever growth recorded in any such period, the fact that it occurred during the period of highest growth in...

There are signs of resistance from private schools to the clause in the RTE Act stipulating implementation of 25 per cent reservation. EVER since the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE Act), 2009, came into effect a little over a year ago, there has been a perceptible sense of insecurity among sections of managements of private, unaided schools, parents of children going to these institutions and, in...

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has said recreating Nalanda University would not be easy and that it needed a scientific attitude and disciplined thought and the inspiration for this could come from old Nalanda itself. At the Indian Science Congress in Chennai today, Sen said: “The meeting here gives me an opportunity to recollect the pursuit of science in old Nalanda which will inspire and guide our long-run efforts in new Nalanda.” Sen...