India's economic growth has added over seven million new jobs every year for almost a quarter of a century. Workers have seen their wages - adjusted for prices - rise by nearly 3% a year. Poverty rates among wage workers and the self-employed have fallen. Going forward, with swelling numbers of new entrants - and more women entering the job market , as was the case during east Asia's rapid...

The human resource development ministry today agreed to some key demands of the Bar Council of India, defusing the war over regulating legal education, though it didn’t concede the turf entirely. “The ministry has agreed to accept the BCI’s demand that it should regulate all aspects of the profession of law, including its foundation through legal education,” council chairman Ashok Parija told The Telegraph after a meeting with HRD minister Kapil...

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...

The University Grants Commission has demanded a four-fold hike in funds allocation in the 12th five-year Plan to create 10 million additional seats in higher educational institutions. The demand has come in spite of the higher education regulator managing to spend only 50 per cent of the Rs 46,449 crore allocated in the 11th Plan three months before the period ends. The UGC has submitted a detailed report to the HRD ministry,...

Three bills the Centre has lined up to regulate higher education have been described as “draconian” by private institutions, which fear their enactment will bring the segment under a “police raj”. Two of the bills provide for jail terms and stiff fines to ensure that colleges and Universities obtain accreditation before — and not after — starting courses and refrain from making exaggerated claims to attract students. For instance, under the “unfair...