State told to take up accreditation of 57 colleges on priority

Vikas Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, December 28

Of the 98 government colleges in the state, only 21 have received accreditation while 57 colleges, established in 2006 or before, have not fulfilled the accreditation criteria. The accreditation process of rest of the colleges in on.

This was revealed in the Project Approval Board meeting of the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), New Delhi, recently.

The data of the 98 government colleges was provided by the state to the Ministry at the meeting wherein instructions were issued to take up the accreditation of 57 colleges on a priority basis.

“The state has agreed to fill vacant faculty positions. Currently, the state’s student teacher ratio (STR) is high 36:1 and the state needs to specify timeline/plan of action by which it proposes to fill vacant positions and also further bring STR to the prescribed level of 20:1 and later to 15:1,” a HRD Ministry statement said.

Sources said the state government had submitted the annual work plan and budget plan but it proposed it for three years. The Ministry stressed on the need to furnish its eight-year perspective plan as well.

As per data available, the expenditure of J&K on higher education as a percentage of gross state domestic product in the last three years 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13 has been Rs 390.51 crore (0.685 per cent), Rs 518.31 crore (0.786 per cent) and Rs 510.59 crore (0.671 per cent), respectively.

The State Higher Education Council, J&K, was constituted in 2010 with the Chief Minister as the chairperson, Education Minister as the vice-chairperson and the Chief Secretary as a member.