| Kapil Sibal Welcomes
Foreign Universities in India
Human Resource Development
Minister Kapil Sibal says foreign universities like Harvard were welcome
in India. He also clarified that the ministry wished to abolish the Class
10 board exams of only the central and not the state boards.
"If Stanford, Harvard or
MIT want to come here, then what's the harm in it?" Sibal maintained during
an interview to Hindi news channel IBN7 telecast Saturday.
Answering a question on whether
foreign varsities would be sensitive to the Indian needs and culture, Sibal
said: "We will not do anything which will harm children."
"They will come to India
on certain terms and conditions or else, we wont allow them to come," he
added.
On the Yashpal Committee's
apprehensions on foreign universities coming to India, the minister said:
"The Yashpal Committee is not a Bible. This is just a social dialogue and
we will take into consideration everyone's views. Democracy means only
that.
"We will decide according
to national interest. Recently I went to Malaysia where foreign universities
are investing. The expenses incurred in educating a child there are just
half of that in Australia. If the universities are giving same education
in Malaysia at half the price, what's wrong in that?"
On abolishing Class 10 board
examinations, Sibal said he was only talking about abolition of the board
exams under the CBSE (Central Board of School Education) not the state
boards.
"I talked about the 10th
board and the national curriculum framework of CBSE system. CBSE is associated
with the centre. I said that, in all the schools affiliated to the CBSE
if a student wants to pursue his studies till 12th then 10th board exams
should be made optional for him.
| "State boards are not connected
with CBSE. So to say that we're interfering federalism is wrong. When we
will try to bring uniform system, in which there are still 5-6 years, then
we will talk with states. And we will start talking about it with states
soon. We should plan for a structure of uniform exam...for entering universities.
In my 100 days' agenda there is no such programme."
The minister said: "We'll
have a full-fledged discussion on this. Europe has IB (International Baccalaureate)
schools in which schools of Romania, Czechoslovakia, France, and Germany
are associated with it. Children are from different countries but they
all appear in IB system. Here we are talking about different countries.
"If they can have unified
system so why not India? Unified system is also associated with quality.
Pass percent in states is just 27 percent. This implies that 73 percent
of students fail in the state boards. And if states will not try to improve
the quality then and how will children compete?" |
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