The National Knowledge Commission suggested that the proposed national…

Concept

The National Knowledge Commission (2005-2009), chaired by Sam Pitroda, examined how Indian higher education is structured. Its structural argument turned on two competing university designs.

In the affiliating design, one university writes the syllabus, conducts the examinations and awards the degrees for a large number of separately managed colleges, so the university centre spends most of its capacity on regulation and examination administration rather than on teaching and research. In the unitary design, the university itself is the teaching institution: it runs its own departments, its own students and its own research, and administers nothing beyond its own campus.

Application

The Commission recommended creating about 50 new National Universities as models of excellence. Because the overload of the affiliating structure was precisely the defect the new institutions were meant to design out, they were proposed as unitary institutions, established without affiliated colleges under them. Each was to teach its own students directly, so that its academic capacity went into instruction and research instead of into administering a network of colleges.

Contrast

• Public funding: the Commission asked for a large increase in government spending on education, so financing from public sources was part of the design rather than something the new universities were to be denied.

• Linkage with industries: the Commission pressed for closer collaboration between higher education institutions and industry through sponsored research and applied work, so industry connection was to be built in.

• Teaching departments: a unitary university is constituted of its own discipline-wise departments, so teaching departments were the core of the proposed structure.

Result

The feature the proposed national universities were to be established without is affiliated colleges.