The state government has decided to run 71 newly constructed/under construction colleges as government colleges, while the establishment of Vivek University in Bijnor district has also been approved. These decisions will prove to be a milestone in the direction of providing quality and affordable higher education in the state, a government spokesperson said.

After the meeting, higher education minister Yogendra Upadhyay said that currently 171 government colleges are being run by the department. Out of these, 71 colleges are newly built or are under construction and 17 of them were selected as constituent colleges. Earlier, these were run by universities.

Recently, some universities had expressed their inability to run these institutions smoothly. Thereafter, a proposal was brought that the state government will now directly run 71 colleges.

Till now, people were employed on contract basis, now 71 posts of principals will be created in all 71 colleges and 1136 posts of assistant professor, 639 class three and 710 class four posts will be created in these colleges. This will provide employment opportunities and improve the quality of education.

Upadhyay said that Vivek University has been provided the authority to run in Bijnor. With this, now another private university will start operating in the state. This will promote healthy competition, which will further increase the quality of government universities.

He said that in the last two-and-a-half years, universities with highest grades have emerged in UP. Currently, in the NAAC grading, seven universities of UP are A++, four are A+ .

Along with this, six private universities are A+ and four private universities have been included in A grade.

The minister claimed that earlier no university of UP was even in the top 500. Today, three universities of the state are in the top 100. The minister said that the target of the UP government is to open one university in all the districts of the state in the next five years.