INDIA: March target for higher education laws - Sibal

India will introduce by March legislation to increase the quality and reach of higher education, Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal said last week, writes Bibhudatta Pradhan for Bloomberg. The government will seek to create an independent accreditation agency that will set benchmarks for all universities and colleges in the country, Sibal said. It will also draw up laws to govern the entry of foreign institutions and a regulator for higher education.

"The whole structural framework is going to change," the minister said. India is ranked 102 out of 129 countries, immediately below Kenya and Nicaragua, in Unesco's 2009 Education for All Development Index that scores nations on the spread, gender balance and quality of primary education and adult literacy.

Ministers say they are spending more on teaching and building new schools, colleges and universities to enable a greater proportion of India's hundreds of millions of students to obtain an internationally competitive education.
Full report on the Bloomberg site