Minister Badri Narayan Patra addresses the East zone vice-chancellors’ meet in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Sept.2: Vice-chancellors from the eastern zone met at a conference here today and asked the government to build infrastructure for Indian universities before allowing their foreign competitors into the country.

Speaking at the conference P.T. Chande, president, Association of Indian Universities, said: “The foreign universities bill, that seeks to allow overseas institutions set shops in India, is like inviting foreigners to invade the country intellectually.”

He said the government should focus on strengthening Indian universities first. “Only then will our universities be in a position to give these foreign universities some competition. Help the state universities to set up good labs, appoint quality teachers, and provide students with all modern facilities. Make us healthy enough before allowing foreign universities open their campuses here,” Chande said giving the example of government schools that lost their credibility after the invasion of private schools.

“In a country where all universities and colleges are struggling to find quality faculty, these universities will rob us of our best teachers for a higher salary. With the ‘cream’ of the faculty gone, we will be left with nothing at all,” he said.

The association also sought to remove clause 12(b) of the UGC Act that allows allocation and disbursement of grants only to those institutions that satisfy the commission’s infrastructure guidelines.

“Only with 12(b) recognition (an infrastructure guideline), an university is considered eligible for grants from the central government and other institutions that will enable it to strengthen infrastructure, education and extension programmes. They should either relax or revoke this Act. The UGC team should fund the new universities first and allow them to create and develop their infrastructure. Then the commission after five or six years should come and check how varsities have performed and then decide whether to continue funding or not. How else do they expect the universities to survive on their own without grants?” said Chande terming the clause as ‘faulty’.

Speaking on the occasion, A.D.N. Bajpai, secretary general of the association, said exams such as NET and SET for lectureship conducted by the UGC should include tests to judge the communicative skills of the candidate.

“The tests only judge the academic brilliance of the candidate. However, the communication skills are also important,” he added.

The conference aims to come out with resolutions containing measures to be adopted by various stakeholders of higher education.

Present on the occasion were vice-chancellors from universities of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa and eastern Uttar Pradesh. They participated in the convention and discussions were held on the theme of ‘Bridging gaps in higher education’.

Discussion were held on topics including attracting and improving quality of teachers, model consortium of the universities, use of IT in academic and governance and financial aspects. Earlier, minister of higher education Badri Narayan Patra had inaugurated the conference.