‘Expanding Quality Education’: Niti Aayog Recommends Key Reforms To Strengthen State Public Universities – News18

Last Updated:February 11, 2025, 09:28 IST

Niti Aayog’s report suggests reforms for state universities, focusing on faculty recruitment, research, and teaching quality, aligning with the National Education Policy for Viksit Bharat by 2047.

From reforming faculty recruitment process, accreditation process to introducing a national research policy, promoting research in humanities, measuring teaching quality on a semester basis, and formulating state-level higher education roadmap — are some of the key recommendations made by Niti Aayog, government’s policy think-tank, to strengthen state public universities — in a report released on Monday.

The report titled ‘Expanding Quality Education through State Public Universities (SPUs)’ — brought out in consultation with 20 states – is the first such report by the think tank, it said.

According to Niti Aayog members, 20 states have given written submissions on the improvements they seek in their public universities.

It has been prepared with a vision of strengthening state universities in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) and a part of the Centre’s vision of Viksit Bharat by 2047.

The report comes at a time when most of the Opposition-ruled states have been against the Centre’s new National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 and the recently released draft UGC rules on faculty recruitment. Karnataka recently held a conclave of state higher education ministers to unite against the UGC draft rules. The Kerala government plans to hold a similar conference against the recently released draft guidelines on February 20 while Tamil Nadu had already announced coming up with its own state education policy.

According to the report, state public universities account for 81 per cent of the total student enrolment in higher education.

As of January 2025, India has 495 SPUs with Karnataka leading at 43, followed by West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh with 38 each.

Over the last 14 years, the growth of SPUs stands at over 50 per cent. The decadal improvement (from 2011-12 to 2021-22) of student enrolment in SPUs reveals an increase of 38 per cent to approximately 3.24 crore students.

VK Paul, member, Niti Aayog, said, “The report provides a distilled essence of the insights gained from extensive stakeholder consultations held with state government officers of higher and technical education departments from over 20 states and union territories, Vice-Chancellors (V-Cs) of 50 state public universities and heads of several state higher education councils.”

Key recommendations

The report has come out with 80 short, medium, and long-term recommendations across four categories – quality of education, governance, funding and finance, and employability.

The think tank has categorised quality further into two heads — research, and pedagogy, digitalisation and internationalisation.

To improve the quality of education in terms of research, the Aayog has recommended introducing a National Research Policy. It also suggested creating Centres of Excellence in cluster of SPUs to address local challenges.

It also suggested promoting humanities and fundamental research as well supporting research commercialisation and start-ups and designating leading SPUs as research and knowledge partners.

One of the important recommendations was measuring teaching quality on a semester basis. Besides, it suggested adopting digital platforms of learning; collaborating with foreign universities for providing a global perspective to faculty and students; and attracting talent from abroad to leading universities.

The reports also recommended establishing a state-level Infrastructure Finance Agency for state universities on the lines of Higher Education Finance Agency (HEFA).

“It is suggested that state universities focus in robust, alumni and corporate engagement programmes for financial support,” it stated.

According to Pankaj Mittal, secretary general, Association of Indian Universities (AIU), said that during deliberations with states, Vice-Chancellors across universities raised three major concerns — funding limitations, governance issues with state governments, and the need for capacity building — which is what the report addresses.

For better governance, the report suggests state universities to formulate state-level higher education roadmap for 2047, empowering state higher education councils, reforming faculty recruitment process and streamline faculty management, revamping composition of governing councils and promoting administrative appointments from teaching fraternity.

It also suggested reforming accreditation process and streamlining affiliation process while also ensuring greater collaboration between state higher and technical education departments.

To increase employability among students, the report suggested enhancing focus on internships and apprenticeships.

“State universities must support entrepreneurship and Innova and encourage students to be job-creators. They must also strengthen university-industry collaboration through joint research and consultancy projects,” it stated.

It also recommended promoting faculty autonomy to design industry-relevant curriculum, integrate sports and create Lifelong Learning Centres in state public universities.

State Statistics

According to the report, the top 10 performing states in terms of growth in the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) over a decade (from 2011-12 to 2021-22), include – Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, West Bengal, Karnataka, Goa, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, and Rajasthan. Similarly, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu are the top five best performing states in the Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) during the same period, the report highlighted.

The report shows that in Gender Parity Index (GPI), another major indicator of performance of state universities, the top 10 states include – Nagaland, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Sikkim, Haryana, Rajasthan, Tripura and Tamil Nadu.

‘State universities to become benchmarks’

Niti Aayog vice-chairperson Suman Bery said that in many global education systems, public universities set the benchmark for excellence, as seen in the US and Brazil.

“While India has institutions like IITs, state public universities must also strive for high standards. The think tank’s role is to create evidence through research, while implementation remains the Education Ministry’s responsibility. I hope the recommendations would be enthusiastically taken forward by the ministries in the central and state governments,” said Bery.