Promoting quality and excellence of global standards and expanding quantitatively was the urgent need of the field of higher education in India, Association of Indian College Principals (AICP) has suggested.

A group of 25 leading universities in the country should be identified and encouraged to work to improve standards with reference to the criteria chosen to rank the universities across the world, since there was not a single university in India in the list of top universities in the world.

In a resolution adopted at the two-day International Conference on the role of Higher Education in National Building, which concluded here yesterday, AICP suggested that the Government set up a separate body of the heads of these institutions at the national level to prepare a time-bound action plan and road map, supported by the Centre with adequate funding.

In view of the need to increase the Gross Enrollment Ratio, planned efforts may be made to substantially increase the number of universities and colleges in India, simultaneously restricting the number of colleges affiliated to each university, another resolution suggested.

Suggesting that at least 100 national universities with at least 50 constituent colleges attached to each of them be set up in the next three years, AICP sought the constitution of a Higher Education Council in every State be made mandatory to enable universities and college to become eligible for development grants.

Appointments of Vice-Chancellors, Principals and faculty should be free from corruption and political interference in all the States, it said.

Other resolutions include granting autonomy to deemed universities and autonomous colleges as a broad policy, initiative to conduct degree examinations through a separate examination board and also stepping up considerably the Central and State expenditure on education, and also setting up an independent National Research Council for monitoring quality of research and issuing guidelines to universities and research institutes.