The Centre and state government are locking horns, even as higher education suffers. Education being a sate subject, Centre blames the poor quality on state government. The Centre Government holds states more responsible as 62 per cent of country’s universities and 99 per cent of colleges are under state domain. But majority of these state universities and colleges have poor quality as per the assessment by NAAC . As per the data of NAAC assessment done by end of 2007 and available with University Grants Commission ; about 22% state universities were in grade A, 72% in B and 4% in CIn case of colleges, about 9% are in grade A, 68% in grade B and 22% in grade C.

However, these data just include 36 percent of state universities (that is 102 out of278and 18 per cent of college (that is 3934 out of 21064) which were assessed and accredited by NAAC by end of 2007.So the Centre proposes introduction of Mandatory assessment and accreditation for universities and colleges so that there must be healthy competition among and students get entitlement to know that what quality they are going to get.

The 11th plan has also recommended the policy of compulsory assessment and accreditation. The centre’s eye is not only set on country’s inside requirement of quality human resources but it is also looking at the opportunity to outsource this quality human resource given the demographic dividend(having more young and working population) India has over European countries. The recently submitted Yashpal Committee report has several suggestion in this direction, but it is to be seen that how far the report is implemented in letter or spirit.