There is no doubt that despite being among the issues most passionately debated in this country, there is an alarming decline in the quality of education and research offered by our universities. Equally, there can be no doubt that the present boom in our economic life has been fuelled largely by these centres of higher education. Our universities, medical institutions, IITs and IIMs have shown themselves to be invaluable; thankfully, those who created our system of higher education in the years after Independence, were prescient enough to see that knowledge gives a nation the kind of power that mere gold and oil cannot.