Date:05/09/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/09/05/stories/2006090520930400.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

Governor favours private participation for quality higher education

Staff Reporter

`Interaction between different faculties vital'

Chaturvedi says
Many youngsters in rural areas have been deprived of quality education

Private institutions must come forward in providing education

BANGALORE: Governor T.N. Chaturvedi and Minister for Higher Education D.H. Shankaramurthy have favoured participation of private institutions for dissemination of quality higher education across the country.

Speaking at the inauguration of the new campus of CMR Group of Institutions on Monday, Mr. Chaturvedi said most of the youngsters in rural areas, who had a lot of potential, had been deprived of quality higher education. The talent of these youngsters need be harnessed and this could be done only if they were provided with quality higher education, which was largely confined to urban areas, he said.

Universities should work with private institutions in providing quality higher education to the people in the hinterlands. But private institutions should not make it as a commercial venture. Education had a social mission and institutions should run them in the spirit of social service, Mr. Chaturvedi said.

`Guiding force'

Mr. Shankaramurthy said it was wrong to consider that it was the State Government's responsibility to provide quality higher education. "It is an outdated thinking... we have gone wrong somewhere. Private institutions must come forward in providing education. We will stand as a guiding force," he said.

The Governor said there was a need for close interaction between different faculties and systems of study in the university to widen the frontiers of knowledge of a student.

Such confluence of faculties was fruitful and this was being practised in some foreign universities.

"I am not asking the universities here to imitate the foreign universities. But the good things from foreign universities need to be adopted in the form that will help students here," he said.

Mr. Chaturvedi commended the work of CMR Institutions for providing under one roof, education from primary school level to masters degree.

Minister for Fisheries B. Nagaraja Shetty read out the text of the speech of Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy. Vice-Chancellor of Bangalore University S.A. Ranganath spoke.