Marking AIU’s 96th Foundation Day, top educationists deliberate on AIU’s role in reviving the dire state of higher education

Association of Indian Universities, the oldest advisory body for Indian Universities, recently celebrated its 96th Foundation day on 23rd March. To mark this momentous occasion for Indian universities, Ten News hosted a panel discussion with eminent educationists deliberating on AIU’s role in reviving the dire state of higher education in the country.

Prof (Dr) R.K Khandal, Former Vice Chancellor, Uttar Pradesh Technical University (UPTU) and President (R and D) India Glycols Limited; Prof P. B. Sharma, Vice Chancellor, Amity University Gurugram and Past President – AIU; Dr (Mrs) Pankaj Mittal, Secretary-General, AIU; Prof (Mrs.) Ms Amrita Dev, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women; Dr Harivansh Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH, Greater Noida; and Dr Jagannath Patnaik Vice Chancellor ICFAI University, Sikkim participated in the panel discussion. The panel discussion was moderated by Dr. Rudresh Pandey.

While speaking during the panel discussion, Prof (Dr) R.K Khandal flagged three key issues that the AIU will need to work upon.

The first issue being the need for AIU to relook its vision and mandate. Prof. Khandal said, “This institution was created by Britishers around hundred years ago, so now it’s time to relook and review its vision and mandate. We have to analyze how much we have achieved and how much we were supposed to achieve when this association was founded.”

The second issue, raised by Prof. Khandal, was the neglect of the private sector by government education bodies despite 70-75% of higher education being in the hands of the private sector.

Indian universities scoring dismally low in global university rankings was the third key issue that Prof. Khandal flagged during his address.

Speaking on the NEP 2020 and advocating for enhanced focus on applied research, Prof. P.B Sharma said, “The new education policy has a broader agenda which I am sure you people are highly conscious about. We have to try to bring this agenda with a tremendous amount of object orientation in our research and innovation ecosystem so that we are able to focus on our own major problems and also join the world community in solving the major challenges.”

“Every single penny spent on research must have an outcome which creates ‘Advantage India’. For this, our research must focus on solving the current and future problem which our own community is facing. Unfortunately, the focus, especially in Indian universities, is on publication, rather than patenting,” he further added.

During his address to the vice chancellors and AIU S-G, Dr. H. Chaturvedi talked about how requisite funding is imperative for improving the quality of higher education and effective implementation of national education policy, especially in the background of Covid-19, which has devastated the education system and created a situation of havoc for schools and higher education institutions.

“Many private colleges have undergone difficult times. Their whole financial viability has been affected by Corona because the fee realization has gone down. The number of admissions has gone down. The very ambitious NEP cannot be implemented effectively in the background of Corona, without huge funding, required for raising the quality of higher education in the country,” Dr. Chaturvedi said.

He further highlighted the fact how the current government in the US has given a huge amount of 75 billion US dollars (or rupees 5 lakh crores), just to the higher education sector.

In her address, Dr. Pankaj Mittal briefed about some innovative changes that she brought after she stepped into the office of AIU as a Secretary General.

The most important being the ‘Computerization’. “With computerization, the work has become more seamless, automatic, transparent and fast.”

While talking about the activities undertaken by AIU during the period of Covid, Dr. Mittal said, “We did many training programs for our faculty members, so that they can teach effectively during online classes. We did online training programs for placement officers so that they can conduct online placements. We also organized virtual cultural programs for students, one of them being ‘Kuch Artistic Karo Na’ which received 2500 video entries from 600 universities.”

Dr. Mittal further shared AIU’s plan to increase the diversity in Indian campuses, both intra-country and inter-country, through a collaboration portal which is under development right now. The portal will enable foreign universities to filter out the best universities in different subjects. The portal is supposed to make the collaboration process smoother.

While talking about another project, Dr. Mittal said that there is a lot of requirement for consultancy among the universities for things like – NAAC rating, implementation of NEP, NIRF, research projects. “In future, the AIU  is thinking of making a pool of consultants which will help us in providing consultancy services to the universities.”

Dr. Mittal further invited the vice chancellors for an annual conference on implementation of NEP on 14th April which will be inaugurated by PM Modi in Ahmedabad. During the conference, the AIU will share a policy document which will propose actions required for effective implementation of every single NEP recommendation.

In her address, Amita Dev raised the need to promote STEM education especially among the girl students. “It’s a matter of concern that less interest is building towards STEM education and people are looking for other opportunities.” Dr. Dev shared a study from Delhi where it was found out that out of 2.5 lakh students appearing for 12th exams, only 25,000 girls were pursuing STEM. In Delhi government schools, only 9416 girls are pursuing STEM education.

Secondly, Prof. Dev talked about the low low capacity utilization in STEM or technical education. “The institutions under AICTE have a capacity of around 38-40 lakh students, unfortunately out of this capacity, only 20-22 lakh students are pursuing technical education. Out of these 20-22 lakh students, only 13 lakh students are able to complete their graduation and out of these 13 lakhs, only 7 lakh students are employable.”

Speaking on the poor performance of Indian universities on the grounds of research, Prof. Dev suggested that all the educational institutions must have a linkage with the research labs. It can be any research lab including DRDO, CSIR lab, Indian Agriculture Institute lab and so on. “Unless and until we collaborate with these research labs, the research in India will always be a question,” added Prof. Dev.