Education, serving as the bedrock for holistic growth, empowers individuals, society and nations alike

Sustained growth in the sphere of knowledge enrichment is an essential factor for the advancement of human civilization. Needless to say, education is the backbone of holistic growth for individuals, society, and the nation. Quality contemporary education promotes economic, intellectual, and social growth by empowering youth with attributes such as critical thinking, creativity, skill development, innovation, and entrepreneurship. 

These attributes are essential for inclusive growth, social harmony, and horizontal and upward mobility. Moreover, quality education fosters scientific advancement and helps create a rational and just society. With a superb demographic dividend, India’s commitment to providing high-quality 21st-century education to its youthful population will determine the future of the country.

In this context, Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), an overarching centrally sponsored scheme, has become a key driver for promoting equity, access, and excellence in higher education. The sole objective of RUSA is to create an ecosystem for the best quality higher education by strategically funding higher education institutions under state governments and union territories. 

RUSA also focuses on ensuring equity in higher education by promoting the inclusion of women, tribals, minorities, differently-abled persons, socially disadvantaged, and economically weaker sections. Additionally, it also aims at quality assurance, infrastructure development, faculty recruitment, and research and innovation.

RUSA is being implemented in mission mode to fund state government universities and colleges to achieve educational objectives. This has helped state governments with strategic planning and execution for completely revamping the higher education ecosystem to address issues of access, equity, quality, and related concerns. 

After the completion of the first phase, it was extended as RUSA 2.0 until March 2020, with further extension provided until March 2021 under the same programmatic and financial frameworks.

RUSA, a norm-based and outcome-dependent scheme, has significantly contributed to sectoral outcomes through various focused components. In the first phase, RUSA covered a total of 2,107 institutions across different components with a budgetary outlay of 8,118 crore for infrastructural grants. Under the second phase of RUSA, around 1,050 institutions received funding, with a total allocation of 6,475 crore, of which infrastructure grants accounted for a 35% share and quality and research initiatives constituted a 31% share. Better achievement of targets in certain areas has been observed under the second phase, indicating maturity in implementation and processes. 

An independent performance review conducted by IIT Bombay in 2017 found that GER increased from 19.4% in 2013 to 25.2% in 2018, and the teacher-student ratio also significantly improved after the implementation of RUSA. While the number of accredited institutions during the scheme period has increased, a large number of institutions are still unaccredited. 

Despite the high focus of the scheme on infrastructure augmentation, some surveys conducted in the past highlight gaps in infrastructural availability and the quality of infrastructure in a few institutes. Limited usage of ICT-based classroom transactions has also been observed in some sampled institutes. 

This new avatar of RUSA targets to reach out to the unserved, underserved areas, remote and rural areas, difficult geographies, LWE areas, the North-eastern region, aspirational districts, tier-2 cities, areas with low GER, etc., and to benefit the most disadvantaged areas and socio-economically disadvantaged groups. It also aims at revamping and re-energising the learning system for the delivery of quality higher education in tune with the key recommendations of NEP-2020. The focus of strategic funding under PM-USHA, apart from improving equity, access, and quality, has shifted to transformative reforms such as gender inclusion, multidisciplinary education and research, ICT, and enhancing employability through vocationalisation, skill upgrading, and innovations. This would support around 1,600 projects worth Rs 12,929.16 crores, with a 60:40 sharing arrangement with the state governments.

PM-USHA is the central government’s commitment to meet the promises held by the rich expanse of India’s state universities. The country’s future lies in empowering these campuses to enhance quality learning, and transformative research, and promote skill development, innovation, and entrepreneurship. 

As a centrally sponsored scheme, the vision of RUSA is loud and clear that at times the most important lessons of life are learned outside the classroom. This will also strengthen the bond between education and employment by bridging the skill gap and satisfying the entrepreneurial hunger of youth. Finally, it will empower youth with life skills to contribute meaningfully towards the economic, intellectual, and social imperatives of Bharat and thus realise PM Modi’s vision of Viksit Bharat@2047.

(The writer is Vice Chancellor at Central University of Punjab, Bathinda; views are personal)