From 50 Years Ago: University Curb on Admissions.

At a recent meeting of the Parliamentary Congress Party, Prime Minister Nehru is reported to have extended his support to the Union Government’s decision to impose restrictions on students seeking university education and limit admissions through a process of selection. Dr Shrimali, Union Edu-cation Minister, had hinted at the possibility of such a move in the Lok Sabha earlier, ex-plaining that his Ministry had become con-vinced that admissions to universities should be restricted…Dr Shrimali, in his observa-tions on the subject, had sought to question the way in which State Governments were starting universities, sometimes even with-out consulting the University Grants Com-mission. From this it might appear that it is the financial implications of opening new universities rather than any considerations of principle that have been weighing with the Ministry... The fact that colleges are getting more and more crowded, with the demand for seats out-pacing the supply and giving rise to numerous perplexities in the process, is not denied. But to try to avoid such a situation by imposing re-strictions on admissions is to escape from the problem rather than to solve it…As the Chief Minister of Bombay, Shri Chavan recently point-ed out, mere considerations of merit might op-erate unfairly against students coming from the educationally backward or financially handi-capped classes that might lack the resources needed to foster competitive merit in the young.