Chandigarh, August 11—Haryana will soon have a National Law University. This was announced by the Chief Minister, Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda, while presiding over the first meeting of the Haryana State Higher Education Council, here today.
The Council has been set up by the state government as an apex advisory body to take policy decisions to improve the higher education system, make it more efficient and facilitate access to quality higher education by all segments of the society at affordable cost.
Mr Hooda said that the proposed National Law University, to be set up in the Rajiv Gandhi Education City, Sonepat, near Delhi, under a State Act, would play an important role in evolving and imparting comprehensive legal education at all levels. Besides, it would organise advanced studies and help promote research in all branches of law. Mr Hooda asked the officers and Vice Chancellors participating in the meeting to promote science in the higher education. He also directed that there should be no shortage of teaching faculty in the state. He asked the Vice Chancellors to streamline the B.Ed. education and to get the standards of those colleges maintained.
Expressing happiness over the fact that girls were getting ample opportunities for higher education in the state, Mr Hooda said that there were about 57 per cent girls in the institutes of higher education in the state. Out of the 4,45,105 students in higher education, there are 2,55,217 girls and 1,89,888 boys. The council noted that there has been 145 per cent growth in the students opting for the science stream in the last two years, whereas the growth in arts and commerce has been 60 and 53 per cent, respectively.
The Council took note of the fact that the number of government colleges in the state had gone up from 58 in 2004-05 to 80 in 2010-11; aided colleges from 81 in 2004-05 to 96 in 2010-11; and the number of students from 2,18,170 in 2005-06 to 4,45,105 in 2010-11.
The apex body decided to set up an Inter University Consortium, which would facilitate contacts between state universities, provide a forum for discussion on a wide range of academic and other matters related to universities, and maintain high and comparable academic standards. The consortium would address thematic concerns like syllabus, academic calendars, examination papers, examination schedules and declaration of results.
Issues like further raising the quality and standard of higher education, streamlining the examination system, timely declaration of results, project-based learning, curriculum planning and management and pattern of question papers were also discussed. Strengthening of the distance education programme also came up at the meeting.
The Council meeting decided that the retired teachers would be engaged for higher education on the per period basis.
Council’s Vice-Chairperson and Education Minister, Mrs Geeta Bhukkal, Chief Parliamentary Secretary, Rao Dan Singh, Chief Secretary, Mrs Urvashi Gulati, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, Mr Chhatar Singh, Additional Principal Secretary, Dr K.K. Khandelwal, Principal OSD to CM, Mr M.S. Chopra, Financial Commissioner and Principal Secretary, Education, Mr S.S. Parsad, vice-chancellors of all universities and senior officers of the state government also participated in the meeting.