On Dr Kalam’s death anniversary, Amity Gurugram VC Dr P.B Sharma calls for maximizing ‘Advantage India’ in higher education
Ten News Network
Noida, 28 July 2022: Listening to a knowledgeable person talk is worth reading a thousand books. And something similar holds true for the insights of Prof. (Dr.) P.B Sharma, Vice Chancellor of Amity University, Gurugram and the former President of Association of Indian Universities who has an experience of over 44 years in teaching and research.
In an exclusive conversation with Ten News, Dr Sharma, who in his earlier stint has also served as the VC of Delhi Technology University (DTU), shared some unique insights of the education industry.
Talking about the difference that the education system has witnessed over the past few years, Dr. Sharma pointed that one of the foundational changes in the field of education is, earlier teachers were motivated to only teach but now is the time where you not only teach but learn too.
“In today’s world we have tremendous opportunities to access knowledge around us in the form of books, which are reservoirs of knowledge and we also have privilege to interact with anyone around the world. Therefore, the fundamental change to be brought in our universities is to acknowledge we are in a new age and in this digital age we need to learn together rather than to teach one because even if teachers teach, the students also teach them,” Dr Sharma said.
Further, Dr. Sharma also presented his view on the implementation of National Education Policy, 2020. “I personally believe NEP 2020 has three parts – first, University has autonomy to implement NEP, including in areas such as curriculum updation, the VCs are completely capable of creating the curriculum as per the modern needs of the society. Future readiness and industry centric education is well within the capabilities and competency of the university. Then there is a second part, which was about the Government of India and was related to restructuring the regulatory system of our universities. On this front NEP has clearly come out that we need to end the multiplicity of regulation in our country and establish a national authority for regulating higher education. The third part of NEP 2020 was a strong connect with the industry and society,” he said, adding that Internationalization of higher education is another major aspect of the NEP.
“For over 75 years our higher education has benefited advanced nations of the world more, in comparison to India. We have to maximize Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s concept of ‘Advantage India’ in higher education. Our efforts should be to create a strong, vibrant, prosperous and sanskari humane society. The larger interest must be to serve the interest of 140 crore people of our country which if I fail to do I will not be able to serve the cause of “Janani Janmabhumishcha Swargadapi Gariyasi”, said Dr Sharma while talking about brain drain from India to the western countries.
On a concluding note, Dr Sharma shared his own personal experience of studying from University of Birmingham where he was sent to by the Government of India in 1973 as Government of India National Scholar. “I learnt punctuality, truthfulness, sincerity, power of education, excitement of science and integration of industry into the University. Good parts of Western culture must be adopted and bad parts must be discarded.” he concluded.
