NITI Aayog CEO States India Needs 2,500 Universities

India being the world’s second-largest higher education system released rankings in four categories and eight subject domains in the year 2023. In 2024, three new categories, namely Open Universities, State Public Universities and Skill Universities are being introduced, thereby expanding the portfolio of Indian Rankings from 13 in 2023 to 16 in 2024. As of June 2024, the number of universities in India is only 1200 whereas the number of students are above four crore. Thus, NITI Aayog CEO in a statement, emphasized that “The country is in demand of more than 2,500 universities if they want a 50% increase in the number of students enrolled in higher education”. 

What Is NITI Aayog?

National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) is the apex public policy think tank of the Government of the Republic of India and the agency tasked with catalyzing economic development, fostering cooperative federalism and moving away from bargaining federalism with the involvement of State Governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach. It was established in 2015 by the NDA government to replace the Planning Commission aiming for a “15-year road map”, and a “7-year vision, strategy, and action plan”. 

Main Objectives:

The NITI Aayog program aims to change India’s economic development policies through a number of objectives.

1. Evolve a shared vision for national development with active State involvement.

2. Promote cooperative federalism through continuous support to States, recognizing strong States as the foundation of a strong nation.

3. Develop village-level plans and progressively aggregate them at higher government levels.

4. Integrate national security considerations into economic strategy and policy.

5. Focus on inclusive growth for vulnerable sections of society.

6. Design, implement, and monitor strategic, long-term policies with mid-course corrections based on feedback.

7. Encourage partnerships with stakeholders, think tanks, and research institutions.

8. Build a collaborative ecosystem for knowledge, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

9. Provide a platform to resolve inter-sectoral and inter-departmental issues for accelerated implementation.

10. Serve as a resource center for good governance and sustainable development practices.

11. Actively monitor and evaluate programmes to strengthen their impact and resource efficiency.

12. Emphasize technology upgrades and capacity building for effective implementation.

13. Undertake additional activities to advance the national development agenda.

Initiatives taken by NITI Aayog

Student Entrepreneurship Programme 

The Student Entrepreneurship Programme (SEP) 1.0 was launched in 2019 while the SEP 2.0 launched in 2020 aimed to convert the grassroots innovations of Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) students into end products. The SEP 2.0 which was launched in 2020 provided the opportunity to the students of ATL to work with Dell volunteers and to get mentor support, end user feedback, manufacturing support and launch support of their products in the market. The scheme would be launched and run by the “Atal Innovation Mission” (AIM) under NITI Aayog in association with Dell Technologies.

Sustainable Action For Transforming Human Capital In Education (SATH-E)

The SATH-E initiative was founded in the year 2017 with state governments. The aim of this program is to transform the education and health sectors. The initiative will be developed by NITI alongside McKinsey & Company and IPE Global consortium. SATH aims to identify and build three future ‘role model’ states for health systems and the selection process for this was conducted through three stage process. These steps include expression of interest, presentations by the states and assessment of commitment to health sectors. Out of the 16 states that participated in it, three states namely Jharkhand, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh were chosen. The first phase of SATH-E was completed in March 2020.

A few achievements of this initiative are as follows:

1. Learning enhancement program/remedial teaching with workbook support for approximately 2.3 crore students implemented.

2. Academic monitoring of schools and students streamlined, with nearly 1.5 lakh inspections carried out every month.

3. By offering online instruction and training for instructors and other faculty members under the following programs, the learning programs have significantly contributed to the Digital-SATH project in the top three regions chosen.

a) Hamara Ghar Hamara Vidyalaya And Digital Learning Enhancement Programme – Madhya Pradesh

b) Shiksha Sanjog’ and ‘Shiksha Sampark – Odisha

c) Hamara Doordarshan Hamara Vidyalaya – Jharkhand

Women Entrepreneurship Platform

The Women Entrepreneurship Platform was launched in 2018 on International Women’s Day. It is the first initiative portal for women entrepreneurs that brings together women from several parts of India to build a nurturing ecosystem aiming to contribute to entrepreneurial aspirations. Since, its launch more than 26,500 women have registered on it. The idea of a women entrepreneurship platform was proposed by Shri Amitabh Kant, The CEO of NITI Aayog. He announced this program at the 8 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2017. There are six key ecosystem needs under this platform: a) entrepreneurship promotion, b) access to finance c) training or skilling, d) mentoring and networking, e) market linkages and f) access to business, legal, digital, and other higher-order support services.

E-AMRIT

It is a one-stop destination for all information on electronic vehicles. E-Amrit aims to create awareness among people to switch to electronic vehicles and sensitize consumers to the benefits of e-vehicles. The portal helps consumers bust the myths about the adaptation of electronic vehicle investment, purchase, and policies. AMRIT means Accelerated E Mobility Revolution for India’s Transportation.

Why Do We Need More Than 2,500 Universities According To NITI Aayog’s CEO? 

According to statistics, India has over 26 crore students in schools and over 4.33 crore students in its high schools. The youth of the country do not have access to higher education due to socio-economic reasons, gender discrimination, high paying fees, faculty teachers, funding, etc. It is said in reports that India spends about 1.2% of its GDP on higher education, which is far below the global average of 4.5%.

Therefore, in recent news NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam raised concerns over India’s education system and the need to rethink its delivery of Education to citizens. He emphasized that while over 10 years, one university and two colleges have opened each week, the number of institutions remains insufficient to meet the rising demand for quality education. Therefore, stating that only 29% of Indian students were enrolling for higher education at universities.

Further elaborating he conveyed,”India, with its expansive digital infrastructure, has emerged as the world’s largest laboratory for digital experimentation, offering unparalleled opportunities to test innovations at scale, at least 50% of the students should be in colleges. We need to double the colleges and universities in the country. The country needs 2,500 universities.” Though not all existing institutions may meet high standards, an increment in number is necessary.