Govt forms new Council of Deemed to be Universities

A Council of Deemed to be Universities (CDU) comprising 15 members with human resource development (HRD) minister as chairman, has been newly constituted by the ministry of human resource development (MHRD). The CDU will be chaired by HRD minister Kapil Sibal and 15 members comprising 8 VCs, 4 academicians and 3 government representatives.

Vice chancellor (VC) of Symbiosis International University, Bhushan Patwardhan, is among the eight VCs of the deemed to be universities who will constitute the CDU. This council will co-ordinate common issues relating to the deemed to be universities and ensure delivery of quality education.

Speaking to DNA, Patwardhan informed that the government took serious cognisance of genuine problems faced by deemed universities, which were discussed during a meeting held on June 25 in Delhi.

“At the meeting, the minister of HRD had assured us that a new CDU will be formed. Accordingly, the government issued an order dated August 29 constituting this council, which will have a tenure of two years from the date of issue of this order,” Patwardhan said. He added that several common issues pertaining to deemed to be universities were discussed during the meeting and a need was felt to form a council.

The issues start from a common identity issue — What is a deemed university? In addition to this, such universities are categorised as private universities and looked with prejudice,” he said.

Besides these Patwardhan said that there are various other issues related to regulations, autonomy, governance, inter-relationship between sponsoring bodies and the university, resource generation, financing, academic expectations, research capacity, innovation culture, cost and quality of education.

“Today, there is little ambiguity about the regulations to be followed by the deemed universities and many of them have challenged few provisions of the regulations issued by government in the year 2010,” said Patwardhan.

All these years, he said there was no proper representation of deemed universities at the MHRD level. India has broadly three types of universities; Firstly, the state-funded public and state non-funded private universities that are established by state government legislation. Secondly, the central universities and institutes of national importance established and maintained by central government. Thirdly, the  deemed to be universities established by notification of the University Grants Commission.

Each of these universities, Patwardhan said, “Face different challenges and problems. Most deemed universities do not get any funding from government, so they need to depend on private resources and tuition fees.”