Jalandhar: Vice Chancellors of various universities today met at Manipal, near Bangalore regarding their reservations and apprehensions for the Foreign Universities Bill and the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) Bill.

Although the VCs of most universities are strongly opposed to the idea of NCHER in its current form as well as the entry of foreign universities in mainstream higher education, they might accept the idea of foreign universities coming to India for higher research and specific fields during their discussions.

An opinion that most universities hold about the NCHER Bill is that instead of restoring their autonomy, the bill seeks further centralization of the authority, which goes against the guidelines of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC).

The Yashpal Committee that had proposed the NCHER Bill had recommended that universities should have complete control over deciding courses, curriculum and teaching and evaluating methods.

Planning to attend the Manipal meet, Dr. Rajneesh Arora, VC of Punjab Technical University (PTU) has said that the universities were not consulted and asked to take part in the reformation, even though they are major stakeholders in higher education.

A decision would be taken at the meeting to expand and promote the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) as a platform for discussing and debating issues related to higher education.