INDIA

INDIA: Five higher education bills before cabinet

Education was set to dominate Thursday's meeting of the Indian cabinet, which was due to look at five Bills - four new and one amendment Bill - from the Human Resource Development Ministry, all related to higher education. All the new Bills are part of Minister Kapil Sibal's plan to revamp higher education, writes Akshaya Mukul in The Times of India.

If cleared, the ministry said it wanted to introduce all the new Bills to parliament next week and expected them to be passed later this year.

Of the four new Bills, three related to accreditation, malpractices and tribunals were earlier referred by the cabinet to an eight-member Group of Ministers which has cleared all of them. The fourth, the foreign education providers Bill, has been in the offing for more than three years and was due back in cabinet with some basic changes. It is likely that foreign education providers interested in setting up a campus in India will have to approach the proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research. The amendment Bill involves the Architects Act.
Full report on The Times of India site