Students from Columbia Business School meet Sibal

A delegation of Graduates Students of the Columbia Business School, USA calling on the Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal in New Delhi on January 06, 2010.

Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal today said his top priority was to get a critical mass of students into universities in India.

Interacting with a group of 22 students from the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University who called on him here, Mr Sibal said this meant that the gross enrolment ratio would need to be raised to 30 per cent from the present level of 12.4 per cent.

He was reacting to a question from the students about what his priorities were for the education sector. He said this would enable the country to develop wealth in a manner that it would want.

He said creating quality faculty at all levels of institutions in the country and inclusion of the disadvantaged sections, such as Scheduled Castes and Tribes and minorities, within the education sytem were his next two priorities.

Responding to the students' queries, Mr Sibal explained that the public sector was the primary vehicle for school education in the country with 93 per cent of the children in India attending government schools.

He said the private sector would also have to be roped in to supplement government efforts in this area, given the financial constraints faced by the government. The model for how the private sector can participate was being worked out, he said.

In the higher education sector, Mr Sibal said the government would expand opportunities for the private sector to play a much bigger role so that the gap between demand and supply could be bridged. He said the private sector would have to play a big role in vocational training.

Mr Sibal was confident that in the next 30 years India would emerge as the natural hub of education in the world.

NNN