Thiruvananthapuram: The single man commission of Rajan Gurkkal appointed by the government to study the restructuring of the higher education council has pointed out that there has been a standstill in its functioning.
The commission submitted its report to Education Minister C. Raveendranath here on Friday.
Since the expiry of the tenure of the last council on April 11, 2016, the activities of the Council have virtually come to a standstill, though the Council continued to function nominally with a skeleton staff. In the absence of officers who take decisions, programmes such as Cluster of Colleges, Erudite Scheme, and Training Programmes for teachers, students, administrators have all been discontinued, crippling equitable and qualitative development of higher education in the State. Therefore, immediate reconstitution of the council should be a top priority for the government, the report pointed out.
The new Council should think of organising a misison mode fund raising programme in collaboration with the government for raising sufficient corpus to make the Higher Education Scholarship Scheme self-sustaining within the next two years.
Though the higher education Act provided for the establishment of a State mechanism for accreditation of universities and colleges, the first Council did not undertake the task as there was no consensus among the stake holders for launching such a programme. The second council has not been able to get into action though it has identified this as one of its priority areas, the report pointed out.
