• Universities should be required to revise or restructure curricula at least once in three years.
• Annual examinations, which test memory rather than understanding, should be supplemented with continuous internal assessment which could begin with a weight of 25 per cent in the total to be raised to 50 per cent over a stipulated period.
• We propose a transition to a course credit system where degrees are granted on the basis of completing a requisite number of credits from different courses, which provides students with choices.
• Universities must become the hub of research once again to capture synergies between teaching and research that enrich each other. This requires not only policy measures but also changes in resource allocation, reward systems and mindsets.
• There must be a conscious effort to attract and retain talented faculty members through better working conditions combined with incentives for performance.
• The criteria for resource allocation to universities should seek to strike a much better balance between providing for salaries or pensions and providing for maintenance, development or investment. It should also recognize the importance of a critical minimum to ensure standards and strategic preferences to promote excellence.
• The elements of infrastructure that support the teaching-learning process, such as libraries, laboratories and connectivity, need to be monitored and upgraded on a regular basis.
• There is an acute need for reform in the structures of governance of universities that do not preserve autonomy and do not promote accountability. Much needs to be done, but two important points deserve mention. The appointments of Vice- Chancellors must be freed from direct or indirect interventions on the part of governments, for these should be based on search processes and peer judgment alone. The size and composition of University Courts, Academic Councils and Executive Councils, which slow down decision-making processes and sometimes constitute an impediment to change, need to be reconsidered on a priority basis.
• We need, and should strive to create, smaller universities which are responsive to change and easier to manage.

• The most obvious solution is to provide autonomy to colleges either as individual colleges or as clusters of colleges, on the basis of criteria that have been stipulated in our note. However, this would be able to provide a solution for a limited proportion, or number, of undergraduate colleges.
• Some of these affiliated colleges could be remodelled as community colleges, which could provide both vocational education and formal education.
• A Central Board of Undergraduate Education should be established, along with State Boards of Undergraduate Education, which would set curricula and conduct examinations for undergraduate colleges that choose to be affiliated with them. These Boards would separate the academic functions from the administrative functions and, at the same time, provide quality benchmarks.
• New undergraduate colleges could be established as community colleges, could be affiliated with the Central Board of Undergraduate Education or State Boards of Undergraduate Education, or could be affiliated with some of the new universities that are established.

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