CII drafting paper on FDI in higher education

Chennai:

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Committee on Higher Education is currently preparing a draft on foreign direct investment in higher education and it will be submitted to the Centre soon, according to chairperson of Education Forum CII southern region Nandini Rangaswamy.

She was reacting to a query from a delegate on Thursday during the interactive session of ‘Innovation in Higher Education – Focus on Tamil Nadu’, organized by CII.

However, to a query on what the paper will consist, she refused to divulge stating that the draft is still in the nascent stage.

Higher Education Minister P Palaniappan, who was present on the occasion, quoting a study by Technopak ‘Forecasting the Financial Potential in Education’ said that private investment in Indian higher education in 2013 will be in the region of $70 billion which will grow to $115 billion in 2018.

“If we go by the presence of overseas education providers in the state the impact will be substantial and keeping this in mind, the government is poised for healthy public-private partnerships with concomitant regulations to uphold quality,” he said.

The minister also said that higher education has yet to exploit the phenomenal growth in information and communications technologies. “The classrooms in colleges paint a dismal picture with only six computers at each college. But things are going to change with the free distribution of laptops by the state government that will bring in innovation in classrooms,” he added.

Vowing to make the state an education hub, the minister said the state government has introduced a series of innovative scheme which include funds for language labs and curriculum development, stipend to socially backward students, besides the free laptop scheme.

N K Ranganath, CII chairman of Tamil Nadu State Council floated the idea of research parks in colleges besides industry putting up percentage of profits for higher education.

Similarly, Madras University vice-chancellor Col G Thiruvasagam suggested that the industry, with government approval, could make use of the Rs 350-crore worth of equipment the University has, for research and development, testing and product development. He also suggested to pool the resources in the over a dozen Universities in Chennai to create a national common facility for industry-institute collaborative research and development.