#IndependenceDay: Universities in India then and now

Yes! Education is a vital factor in human resource development and it is a known fact since time immemorial. Schools and universities played a major role in educating pupils about their rights during the Indian Independence movement against the British rule (1858–1947). Freedom fighters, then, had realized one thing that nothing could compensate education, which was the best tool to encourage the youth to join the freedom struggle.

The year 1857 was very important not only from the point of view of the first ever revolt we had against the British, but a storm was also cooking up in the education sector, which eventually grew leaps and bounds. Do you know three prominent universities – University of Calcutta, University of Madras and University of Bombay - were established in this year. It was a huge thing at that time as we were under the British East India Company, which wanted to bring development for its own sake.

Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Rabindranath Tagore invested their own money for the cause of education. Tagore used the money, which he received along with his Nobel Prize, to expand his school into a university known as Visva-Bharati University. After Independence, schools, colleges and universities mushroomed across India with the formation of the University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1956 and the Central Board of Secondary Education in 1962.

Since then, India’s education sector witnessed tremendous changes and even after Independence, the number of schools and universities also grew in numbers. The number of universities has increased 34 times from 20 in 1950 to 677 in 2014. The sector boasts of 45 Central Universities of which 40 are under the purview of Ministry of HRD, 318 State Universities, 185 State Private universities, 129 Deemed to be Universities, 51 Institutions of National Importance under the ministry (IITs - 16, NITs – 30 and IISERs – 5). The number of colleges has also registered manifold increase of 74 times with just 500 in 1950 growing to 37,204, as on 31st March, 2013.

We bring you some facts about universities, which were set up before Independence and still standing tall: