Professor Amrik Singh |
After a quarter century of active teaching, Amrik Singh moved into administration, which he handled for about two decades. Quite early in his career, he got involved in reading and writing about higher education. In 1962 he brought out the Journal of University Education which ran for five years. Soon after he was selected as Secretary of the Association of Indian Universities where he worked for 17 years. In between he did a visiting assignment at the University of Wisconsin, founded the South Campus of the DelhiUniversity and became Vice-Chancellor of PunjabiUniversity, Patiala. His experience at Patiala was analysed in a book entitled Asking for Trouble: What it Means to be a Vice-Chancellor Today. |
In addition, he has been involved in adult education, management of sports and the publication of Indian Book Chronicle, a journal of book reviews which he founded in 1976 and ran for the next ten years. In addition, he has written extensively on higher education and published about a dozen books, half of them being edited volumes. |
Of his recent books, two of them may be referred to here. The first one is his book on the Role of the UGC. So far, this remains the only critical study of the subject. The second one is called the Challenge of Education and gives a one man survey of education as a whole. |
He has headed several committees. One of them dealt with an inquiry into Andhra Universities for the Andhra Government (1995). Another dealt with School Education Boards on behalf of the Union Government (1997) and a third one was a Plan for Vocationalization of the School level for the Punjab Government (1997). He also acted as Consultant for the 1986 Policy on Education. |