Education department principal secretary Amarjeet Sinha (left) at the workshop on Friday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Education minister P.K. Shahi on Friday urged the newly appointed heads of universities to strengthen the youth and education and claimed that the state government would support those on all fronts.

Speaking on the first day of the two-day interactive workshop on “Higher education in Bihar: Challenges ahead”, the minister said: “Universities have been granted autonomy for betterment of education and they should not misuse.”

Vice-chancellors, pro-vice-chancellors and registrars attended the seminar. The focus of the workshop was to get the vision of the university heads about their plans to take the seats of learning forward in the rapidly changing environment and their ideas about the state government’s expectations in higher education.

N.R. Madhava Menon, the chairman of the committee who prepared the Bihar Universities Act, 2014 — which aims at a uniform act for all state universities in Bihar — stressed on every district having a university. Menon, who drafted the Bihar Universities Act, 2014, said: “Even the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (Rusa) talks about increasing the number of universities in the state and by 2020, every district should have a university and for this, colleges should come forward in forming a university with a cluster of colleges.”

The NR Madhava Menon Committee, which is for public domain, seeks feedbacks on modelling the state universities on the lines of central universities. According to its recommendations, all the state universities will be under the visitor and not the chancellor. While in central universities, the President is the visitor, in the state universities, the governor will be the visitor.

Listing the highlights of the commission, Menon urged the heads of varsities to get their colleges and universities accredited by the end of this year. At present, of 260 colleges in the state, 30 colleges have received accreditation from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (Naac).

As the workshop was interactive, VCs and pro-VCs, attending the workshop, left no chance to corner the experts in university affairs.

The pro-VC of Magadh University, Kriteshwar Prasad, raised the issue of lack of co-operation from the district administration during university examinations.