Survey of Higher Education [1947-2007]

In this book the author, a retired IAS officer, brings his wide and deep knowledge in educational subjects and practical administrative experience to make a sweeping Survey of Higher Education in India in the first sixty years after Independence based on primary sources, canonical reports and other scholarly writings. The Higher Education is defined broadly to cover not only higher general education regulated by the UGC (to which four chapters are devoted), but also technical, teacher, legal, medical (including Allopathic and Alternative systems) and agricultural (including veterinary and forestry) education. The author describes the latest developments including the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), the Yashpal Committee Report and the legislative Agenda of the UPA-II Government. Encyclopaedic in scope, critical in tone but full of constructive and positive suggestions (like the Election Commission being involved in the elections to the professional bodies in the educational area and undertaking an Operation Clean-Up of the higher education system comparable to Abraham Flexners exertions in respect of the American Medical Education in the 1910s), the book would be found useful not only by students and practitioners of education but also by social scientists, contemporary historians, development planners and policy-makers apart from the general reader.