Top 100 institutes will offer online degrees: FM
AN IND-SAT TEST FOR ASIAN AND AFRICAN COUNTRIES SHALL BE USED TO BENCHMARK CANDIDATES FOR SCHOLARSHIPS
NEW DELHI: India’s 100 top educational institutions will start offering full-fledged degree courses online, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her budget presentation on Saturday, in a boost to digital learning, and the doors are set to be opened for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the education sector. India will also conduct an IND-SAT test to screen Asian and African students eligible for scholarships to pursue education in the country.
In her budget speech, Sitharaman sought to meet the expectations of an “aspirational India” by focussing on the employability of young graduates. “By 2030, India is set to have the largest working-age population in the world. Not only do they need literacy but they need both jobs and life skills. Dialogues have been held with state education ministries, members of Parliament and other stakeholders about the education policy. Over 2 lakh suggestions were also received. The New Education Policy (NEP) will be announced soon,” she said.
Significantly, one of the key elements of the draft NEP is allowing foreign universities to offer educational programmes in India.
Sitharaman, too, spoke about greater inflow of foreign funds.
“It is felt that our education system needs greater inflow of finance to attract talented teachers, innovate and build better labs. Therefore, steps would be taken to enable sourcing external commercial borrowings and FDI so as to able to deliver higherquality education,” she said.
Sitharaman also said that students in the general stream, vis-àvis services or technology streams, need improved employability to qualify for better jobs.
About 150 higher educational institutions will start apprenticeship-embedded degree or diploma courses by March 2021, she added. The government also proposes to start a programme whereby urban local bodies would provide internships to fresh engineers for up to one year.
To provide quality education to students of underprivileged sections, the government proposes to open the doors for degree-level, full-fledged online education programme. This shall be offered only by institutions, which are ranked among top 100 in the National Institutional Ranking framework. Initially, only a few such institutions would be asked to offer such programmes, Sitharaman said.
Another key announcement was that under the “Study in India” programme, an IND-SAT test will be conducted for Asian and African countries. It shall be used to benchmark candidates who receive scholarships to study in India. She said the government plans to provide about ~99,300 crore for the education sector in 2020-21 and about ~3,000 crore for skill development.
Asked about the budget announcements, an official said a scheme was being prepared to attract FDI in line with the declaration. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi director, Prof V Ramagopal Rao, welcomed the move to encourage online programmes. Although undergraduate courses would continue to be taught the same way at the elite engineering schools, other courses like Master of Business Administration or Master of Arts could be offered online, he said.
Dheeraj Sharma, director, Indian Institute of Management Rohtak, said: “This is a welcome move and will facilitate degree granting to new applicants and new students to specific programs that are offered online and blended learning mode in various top-ranking institutions.”