FINANCING OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
Increasing costs - This brings us to the issue of financing of the technical education system as such. By and large, the efforts at building up and development of the system has so far been under official auspices - either Central and/or States. However, looking into the enormous costs involved, the maintenance of these courses/institutions and the increasing prices around of men and material, it would not be difficult to envisage a situation where let alone the sponsored agencies, but even the Government agencies, would find it difficult to adequately meet the rising cost of technical education. This is a matter of serious concern and has to be faced squarely before it is too late when this system which has been built with so much of care might crumble because of lack of adequate attention.
Resource Generation by Technical Institutions-It is true that considerable efforts have to be made by the institutions them- selves for augmenting their resources, by way of various measures for resource generation such as consultancy practice, servicing and testing, production, etc. However, as was pointed out earlier In connection with the involvement of the system in community services, here again one should not lose sight of the primary objective of the system as such. Any attempt at raising the resources should have only a secondary role that too complimentary to the academic culture of the system and not for its own sake. If this obvious principle is accepted then the limitations on the institutions raising their own resources will become evident. So, we are left with the major issue again of the provision of adequate funds for the technical education system. It is here, perhaps, one should consider the ways and means by which large users of the products of the system also share the responsibility adequately for the cost of production. There have been suggestions over the years in this direction for motivation by way of incentives, or raising of resources by levying a technical education cess on the users etc. Certain incentives, of course, have been offered by giving to an extent exemption for industry in Income Tax, towards contribution to educational programmes and for a cess in the research and development establishment for R & D purposes. But, however, this has not resulted in a large shift and on the whole most of the burden has been solely on that of the Government. This has been because technical education has been considered as part of social service and governmental responsibility for the social welfare programmes has had to take care of such programmes. It is now necessary for us to have a detailed and fresh look at this issue.
