Narayana Murthy Committee on Higher Education

A Committee headed by Infosys Technologies founder N R Narayana Murthy has given the following recommendations on higher education:

• Form an inter ministerial group to coordinate ministry-specific policy changes that would gear and support the environment for corporate sector participation in higher education.
• Creation of the Council for Industry and Higher Education Collaboration as a nodal agency for facilitating collaboration between industry and higher education.
• Promotion of entrepreneurial outlook in students and staff at the university level with industry support.
• Accreditation should be made mandatory for all universities and programmes run by such universities.
• To enable students from unprivileged backgrounds to avail of services quality higher education, a scholarship fund with a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore be created. All contributions made by the corporate sector for this fund should be granted tax exemption of up to 300 per cent of their contribution.
• A National Educational Loan Fund with a corpus of Rs 100,000 crore be set up by public sector banks to disburse long-tenure loans.
• All norms floor space index should be relaxed to encourage compact city campuses and ensure optimal land utilisation in urban areas.
• To ensure big companies were invited to participate in the process of developing higher education, personal invitations should be sent by the prime minister to 25 Indian companies and 25 eminent, high net worth individuals to start a university on meeting the set conditions

Path-breaking measures like free land for 999 years, 300 per cent deduction in taxable income to companies for contributions towards boosting higher education and 10-year multiple entry visas for foreign research scholars.