-The Economic Times One of the most heartwarming films of 2011 centred on a child labourer who fitted in exceedingly well with his wealthier classmates at school. While a nasty teacher drives the child out of school in the celluloid imagining, in real life, a nasty education system threatens to drive such kids from the country's elite schools.  Among the most jarring arguments against a clause in the Right to Education (RTE)...

Call it a strategy to garner political support for passing pending key education Bills or a progressive measure to reduce caste bias in colleges and universities—the central government has put in place a set of rules that can possibly stop grants or cancel recognition of higher educational institutes engaging in such discrimination. The new rules set out by the University Grants Commission (UGC) aim to provide safeguards to students of reserved...

My reading of Prabhat Patnaik's essay (“Parliament's say extends to the classroom,” The Hindu, May 22, 2012), on the recent controversy regarding the removal of a cartoon from a textbook, is somewhat different from Neeladri Bhattacharya's (“A disquieting polemic against academic autonomy,” May 29, 2012). If I understand that essay's argument, it had two points to make. The first is less important than the second, but it is nevertheless not...

-PTI A Bar Council of India (BCI) delegation today met Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal and threatened a nation-wide stir if legal education is not taken out of the purview of proposed Higher Education Research (HER) Bill.  The BCI has been opposing the HER Bill aimed at regulating the legal education system, saying it is an attempt to take away the powers of the apex lawyers' body.  At a two-hour meeting with...

In an attempt to rein in fly-by-night operators who have set up shops in India, the Universities Grants Commission (UGC) has made its approval mandatory for all collaborations between foreign and Indian educational institutions. The new regulations approved by the UGC on Saturday give existing institutions six months to get approval. The UGC has also laid down dual criteria to ensure that quality academic institutions are allowed to run joint degree...