In Uttarakhand, the Higher Education Directorate was set up in July 2001, and 45 jobs were made for it. The office is currently located in the building of the Government Girls Degree College in Haldwani. The making of its own building is still going on. At the time the Directorate was set up, there were only 34 Government degree schools in the state. Now, there are as many as 70. There are also 16 colleges that get help from the government. Also, the number of schools and universities that pay for themselves is growing all the time. As the number of schools in the state grew and more attention was paid to the quality of higher education, it was clear that the directorate had to do a lot more administrative and oversight work.
Higher education is going through a lot of changes right now, both nationally and internationally. On the one hand, there are new challenges and the process of liberalization, and on the other, more people want to go to college, which is putting a lot of pressure on the infrastructure and people that are already there. The higher education department of this new state, Uttarakhand, is also facing the same problems and difficulties as the rest of the country. Since most of the state is hilly, there are clear problems with giving higher education. Because information and communication technology in the state has a lot of promise, the higher education department has chances to give people access to good higher education at the lowest cost possible.
Also, students in higher education need to learn new skills in a variety of fields as soon as possible because traditional classes are becoming less useful and graduates and postgraduates aren’t getting jobs. Also, there is a lack of skills in new areas of the country, which could lead to a lot of job possibilities. Because of this, vocationalizing higher education is a top funding area for the government. Priority is given to putting in place the bare minimum of infrastructure for newly opened colleges, improving the facilities, adding more courses, and making sure there are enough teachers. Higher education has grown in amazing ways during the last five-year plan. In this new situation, the higher education system is seen as a strong way to build a knowledge-based society (KBS), which is part of India’s plan to become a successful country by 2020. Also, the quality of higher education needs to be looked at in light of regional, economic, social, cultural, and language differences so that demand and quality can be balanced.