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ShareMumbai: The budget for higher education is quite encouraging and innovative in terms of providing special infrastructure to boost higher education. However, it is required to be seen that the disbursement of funds to polytechnics is need based and tuned to develop the skill of every individual in a given trade. The polytechnics are backbones of professional education for the deprived category of students who cannot get into professional engineering education.
It is noteworthy to mention that service-based industries and small entrepreneurs in India are immediately affected by those who pass out from polytechnic institutes as against the engineers who opt for management, foreign fellowships or white collar jobs, and are not available for building the Indian industry. It is more important to have polytechnic-trained people in service sectors than those engineering backgrounds.
Therefore, the special grant to polytechnics is an innovative idea. The central university status, if given to an established university which has both academic and administrative infrastructure available, will be of benefit. I hope the money will not be given to non-existing central universities to start afresh.
The allocation to IITs and NITs is also welcome but that should be used to introduce an additional specialisation which is not covered so far, like engineering in non-conventional energies, climate solution, nuclear engineering and space technologies.
As far as Maharashtra is concerned, it is time to have a good allocation for literacy loans and subsidy to weaker sections in the form of scholarships. As usual, the budget allocation has been enhanced, which will improve the state of higher education.
The author is pro-vice chancellor
