Principal Secretary, Education, Dr. Srikant Baldi said here today that to ensure quality education in the private universities established in the State of Himachal Pradesh, the Education department had constituted five inspection committees. Each committee conducted inspection of two private universities and had submitted the report.

He said that various deficiencies were found as per the report of the committee submitted to the department. The courses run by these universities were sorted out and the universities are allowed to run only those courses in which they were having adequate faculty and infrastructure as per the norms of the Regulatory bodies. Besides, for other courses the concerned universities have been directed to first fulfill the requirement of the concerned Regulatory Body and then apply to the education department.

He said that the conditions imposed by the Education Department to these universities for the existing and new courses as proposed by them includes that additional intake of students would not be more than the norms fixed by the concerned regulatory body. Besides, if the course was not under any regulatory body then the additional intake in it would be equal to the intake fixed by the Himachal Pradesh University for that course. In addition to this course-wise names of the existing faculty along-with their photos, qualification and bio-data must be uploaded on the concerned university website within fifteen days of the issue of the letter by the education department.

In addition to this, other condition which were to be taken account of was, that the new requirement of faculty for the proposed additional intake of students for the above courses must be done one month prior to the start of new session and the names of all newly recruited faculty along-with their photos, qualification and bio-data must be uploaded on the concerned university website one month prior to the start of new session.

Besides, names of the students already admitted in the above courses should be uploaded on the university website within fifteen days of the issue of the letter by the education department. Names of the students who would join in the new session were also required to be uploaded within the stipulated time period of 15 days of the start of the new session.

The necessary infrastructure, lab, library books etc. required for additional intake of the students must be in place prior to the start of the new session as per the norms.

Dr. Baldi said that to remove the shortcomings the education department had directed the concerned private universities to take immediate necessary steps under intimation to the department within a fortnight.

He said that the directions given by the department to the all the private universities had also been uploaded on the website of the Higher Education department. The education department was committed to ensure the standard of education department in Himachal Pradesh, he added.