Restructuring and Reforming of Higher Education : Futuristic Agenda

Higher Education determines not only the economic condition of a country but also its intellectual and social conscience and shows the present and future path of development of country. Quality life of the people of any country largely rest on the quality of education and research. The mission of higher education is to achieve access, quality and create a knowledge society. It is needless to repeat that higher education in India is passing through a major transition because India is third largest in providing higher education in the world after United States of America and China. But there are still many problems such as largest scale illiteracy on one hand and educated unemployed youth on the other. However the 21st century has posed a big challenge for higher education due to new implications like Information and Communication Technology (ICT) & Liberalization, privatization and Globalization (LPG). Also on the social front, India remains highly divided. Access to higher education is uneven with multidimensional inequalities in enrollment across population and geographies. Change in higher education in terms of quality, access and equity is happening much faster only in the few states than other. Besides this India is facing a number of challenges and issues in higher education like knowledge economy, complexities of Indian Federalism in terms of center-state relations, status of policy implementation,funding, privatization, educational malpractices, lack of faculty, problem of quality, and internationalization of higher education. It will be difficult to establish an ideal Indian society unless we do not resolve the contemporary issues in higher education. The main aim of this paper is to discuss various issues regarding higher education and to present an overview of restructuring & reforming of higher education.