|
|
ADDRESS AT THE
GOLDEN JUBILEE CELEBRATION OF UNIVERSITY GRANT
COMMISSION 28-12-2003 : Vigyan Bhavan, New
Delhi University Education and National Missions
I am indeed delighted to participate in the Golden
Jubilee Celebrations of the University Grants Commission which has
contributed to the cause of higher education in the post independent
India for the last five decades through several innovative schemes.
I congratulate the Ministry of Human Resource Development,
University Grants Commission and all those who are associated with
this growth. The Universities have a major responsibility in nation
building through enriching Science, Engineering and Technology and
by providing value based education to students to make them moral
leaders. On this occasion, I would like to share with you some of my
thoughts on "University Education and National Missions".
Second Vision for the Nation
We have all heard about the first vision of the Nation
which commenced in the year 1857. During that period there were few
universities in the country. Many of our freedom fighters were
educated abroad. Lawyers, educators, poets, academicians,
industrialists all of them participated in the freedom movement. It
was a long drawn struggle and we got the freedom and India became
independent in the year 1947. There has been substantial growth in
higher education after independence and today nearly 10 million
students are studying in our colleges thereby in our universities.
We have designed our own higher education system and educated over
eighty million students during this period who are engaged in a
variety of national and international assignments. After five
decades of growth our country has to face new challenges. It has a
second vision to become a developed India by the year 2020. We have
a population of over one billion people of which 260 million are
still living below the poverty line. They need education, they need
habitat, they need health care, and creation of employment
potential. To meet their needs we need the second vision for the
nation. Our GDP is growing at an average rate of 5% p.a. whereas the
economists suggest that to remove the poverty of 260 million people
we have to grow at the rate of 10% p.a. consistently for over a
decade.
![Top](2003-dec28-president_files/pagetop.gif)
Partner to Developed India - Missions
How do we counter this situation? What role our
educational system will play in the second vision of national
development? Is an incremental change sufficient or do we need a
quantum shift in emphasis for developing people who can participate
in transforming India into a developed nation by 2020? Let us study
the proposed integrated missions such as 5000 PURA's (Providing
Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) out of 25000 PURA's, interlinking of
rivers, power mission, agriculture, agro-food processing, tourism,
healthcare, infrastructure development, information and
communication technology (ICT), mass transportation system and
critical technologies. Youth with knowledge, skill and passion are
required for undertaking and completing these tasks in time.
In the next two decades, nation will witness the occurrence
of many events. The vision 2020 will be put into action-oriented
missions. Interlinking of rivers may get priority in the list and
PURA will get into implementation by all the states. Now the
university system apart from its research focus has to become
partners in national development. This will call for changes in the
syllabi. The training will include several aspects that will nurture
entrepreneurial skills in the students. It will also have our value
systems at its core. We now know that high quality developments like
PURA and the networking of rivers are missions that will also call
for high quality research. In order to meet these complex
requirements it has to be recognised that the university should also
be a place of research. 10% of the university facilities should be
allocated exclusively for research. Creation of national institute
of science will also help in identifying areas where research and
developments are co-located and flow from one another.
![Top](2003-dec28-president_files/pagetop.gif)
Present Status of Higher Education System
Number of schemes have been launched by UGC for the
development of the Universities and Colleges, provide access of
education to all the section of the society equitably, especially
for the under privileged and differently abled persons. I understand
that UGC has also launched career oriented courses at the academic
staff colleges. To meet the challenges in education and in global
society, UGC has evolved a scheme of granting potential for
excellence status to selected universities. It is good UGC is
creating four National Institute of Science at Chennai, Pune,
Allahabad and Bhubaneshwar for promoting excellence in Science
Education in collaboration with CSIR, DBT, ISRO, DAE, DST, DRDO and
Department of Oceanography. Generating the sustained interest in the
scientific discipline, will need continuity in provision of
employment.
![Top](2003-dec28-president_files/pagetop.gif)
Employment Generation through entrepreneurship
There has been substantial growth in our higher
educational system and we are generating over 3 million graduates
every year. However our employment generation system is not in a
position to absorb the graduates passing out from the universities
leading to increase in educated unemployed, year after year. This
situation will lead to instability in the social structure. We need
higher education backed by employment opportunities. A multi pronged
strategy is needed to make education more attractive and
simultaneously create employment potential - how do we do that?
Firstly, the educational system should highlight the
importance of entrepreneurship and prepare the students right from
the college education to get oriented towards setting up of the
enterprises which will provide them creativity, freedom and ability
to generate wealth. Apart from entrepreneurship, the youth should
have the spirit that "we can do it". Secondly, the banking system
should provide venture capital right from every village level to the
prospective entrepreneurs for undertaking new enterprises. Banks
have to be proactive to support the innovative products for enabling
wealth generation by young entrepreneurs by setting aside the
"conventional tangible asset syndrome". Definitely this involves
certain amount of calculated risks which can be eliminated by making
an analysis of successful venture capital enterprises. Thirdly,
there is a need to identify marketable products and enhancement of
purchasing power among the people. This can come through the
implementation of mega programmes such as PURA, Interlinking of
Rivers, Infrastructural missions, Power missions and Tourism. Also
genuine border trade can improve if we have a friendly border in all
sectors.
The universities should become a facilitator for
creating this entrepreneurship scheme through the support of the
banking system and the marketing system. This is one way of reducing
the employment gap leading to upliftment of the 260 million people
living below the poverty line.
![Top](2003-dec28-president_files/pagetop.gif)
An empowered University
The SAC-C (Scientific Advisory Committee to the
Cabinet) has given the recommendation: The demand of the country
both in terms of the quality and quantity is so enormous that the
government funding alone will not be adequate to take care of the
needs of the higher S&T education. It is also recognized that
the requirements of the trained manpower arise not only from within
the country but also from abroad as a result of the globalization of
manpower markets.
Recently I was talking to a Physics
Professor from Princeton, I asked him, what is the difference
between an Indian University and Princeton University? And he
replied in a single word that "Freedom is the difference". Of course
this freedom comes out of national administrative vision. Nation has
to graduate towards this. Science has no borders and integrates many
fields. May be, this is what probably was followed in our Gurukuls
and Nalanda University, which were never dependent on the support of
the government or the kingdom. I started visualizing an ideal
university in our country which can have an autonomous totally free
educational environment, which can meet the challenges of 21st
century. An empowered Board of governors and an academic council is
appointed for establishing and guiding the university. The board of
governors should elect the Chancellor and Visitor from within or
outside the board giving credence only to the academic excellence.
It is made fully autonomous with a mandate to develop human resource
of excellence for deployment towards societal transformation.
Each student is assigned a computer connected to the
Internet through wired or wireless connections. In order to make use
of the integrated educational services any time, any where- be it in
the class room or the hostel, he stays always connected. He is in
direct touch with all the happenings on the subject and also in
continuous communications with his/her teachers. Assignments are
given, completed and submitted through e-learning system. His
teachers do not provide him or her solution to any problem. They
only trigger his or her imagination to think wider and find a
solution for him or herself. They encourage him to take risks and
think differently. Students are taught the art of learning rather
than learning itself. In this 21st century, we are seeing the death
of time and distance. It is immaterial where the information is
located at any time, any one, any place. And we will be able to
travel with the information, in fact all the information that you
need in your life can be packed in the disk of your computer that
may store few terra bytes. You will be overloaded with the
information, winner will be the one who knows how to mine the data
and convert it into knowledge. Can we have such an empowered
university?
![Top](2003-dec28-president_files/pagetop.gif)
Virtual University
It is time that we should start looking at the
possibility of creating a Virtual University in India through
networking of all the universities and other educational
institutions for imparting universal tele-education. Virtual
university will have the following tasks:
a) Act as a
central hub of all universities which are networked.
b)
Identify experts of national/international eminence in specialized
areas.
c) Coordinate, organize, schedule and broadcast the
lecture of specialists at a mutually convenient time to all
participants.
d) Record the live transmission of the lecture
with interaction details in a data bank for easy access by
participants for review learning.
e) Digitize all the
university libraries and make it available for seamless access by
all the universities.
f) Provide for all the 3-Ls of
learning- Lectures, Laboratory and the Library- all over the
Internet-
g) The universities need to become learner
centric.
This experiment across the country will provide a
common platform for teaching Schools, Colleges and Universities and
even vocational courses. This will give equal emphasis on theory and
experiments in spite of the fact that it will be done in the
cyberspace. Such is the power of the technology and our
understanding of it. This facility would also help in expansion of
telecommunication and IT services. All this would lead to
synergising the strengths of different universities in promoting
quality education to our students in a cost effective manner. I
suggest the Five Universities which have been recognized as having
"potential for excellence" should be asked to create virtual
universities on the five areas of excellence which will enable
sharing of excellence by all the Universities.
![Top](2003-dec28-president_files/pagetop.gif)
Concluding remarks :11 initiatives
UGC has formulated number of initiatives for promoting
excellence in higher education as per Xth Plan Target. I would
recommend certain initiatives, which can make the educational sector
vibrant and meet the challenges of providing vital human resource
for national development.
1. a. In the first phase 5000
PURAs (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) are planned out of
the 25,000 possible PURAs in the country. Youth with knowledge,
skill and passion are required to be in the centre stage for
participating of such PURAS. An integrated programme should be
developed at graduate and postgraduate levels for developing
technologists and managers for creating and sustaining PURAs. The
first course may commence from academic year 2004-05.
b.
University needs to become the knowledge partner in the programmes
such as India's vision 2020, interlinking of rivers, desalination of
water through nuclear and solar energy etc.,
2. A
transparent system of University performance Evaluation scheme is
required to be evolved. Evaluation criteria may include areas such
as quality and quantity of research, contribution to societal
transformation, utilization and performance of the students who have
passed out in the previous five years, quality and standing of the
teaching staff, promotion of E-governance , transparent examination
system and the student centric responsive administration.
3.
Performance evaluation results could also be used to plan merger of
some universities for promoting synergy and excellence and reducing
managerial overheads.
4. A simple, easy to implement
"educational loan scheme" should be evolved by UGC in collaboration
with the banks for enabling meritorious students to pursue higher
education without disruption.
5. UGC should create a dynamic
curriculum review mechanism relating to current socio-technical
needs of the country.
6. There are a number of young
prodigies in different areas. A system for recognizing these
prodigies and promoting their growth consistent with their abilities
different from the conventional system needs to be designed and
implemented.
7. UGC should create simplified uniform
inter-university mobility norms for students acceptable to all
universities.
8. UGC should plan to build a common digital
library for the all universities and provide them seamless access to
the literary resources.
9. Build Educational Grid which
connects Universities for resource sharing, content generation on
their core competence, e-learning, tele-education and universal
certification.
10. Enlist great teachers of the nation who
love teaching from various sectors
11. Lead to the approval
of empowered university with private initiatives,
national/international.
Wish you all the best.
<<Back
![Top](2003-dec28-president_files/pagetop.gif)
|
|