CHENNAI: Educationists have called for wide-ranging reforms in higher education with a focus more on research and entrepreneurship.
Former Anna University vice-chancellor D Viswanathan said students after completing their engineering should not look for jobs but focus more on entrepreneurship and research. He was among the speakers at the conference, ‘Reforming and Rejuvenating the Higher Education,’ organised by FICCI-Tamil Nadu State Council in association with the department of Higher Education, here on Tuesday.
In his view, to bring down unemployment, skill development was very important. “Engineering students should have more practical skills required in industries than theoretical knowledge. Every college should have entrepreneurship cell and conduct entrepreneurship programs,” he said and wanted the introduction of value education since lack of quality leads to unemployment.
S Ramachandran, vice chancellor of Hindustan University, gave a presentation showing how enrolment in higher education in private colleges has increased from 7.5 million in 2006-07 to 18.5 million in 2016-17 while in State universities it was from 6 million to 11 million in the same period. In comparison to US and China which have 578,802 and 928177 patents respectively till 2015, India's share was only 42,854. “Quantity and quality of teachers both need to be improved. Today student teacher ratio in colleges is 1:23 but ideally it should be 1:10 in research universities, 1:15 in professional institutions and 1:20 in colleges,” he said. Approximately Rs 67000 crore was needed to improve physical infrastructure in institutions and human resources, he added.
“Since the private sector dominates Higher Education, we need to bring public and private institutions to the same benchmark and standards of performance besides funding assistance,” he said.
P Murari, adviser to FICCI President and former secretary to President of India, said there has to be adaptability so that a student could switch over to another course if he has not taken the right course. “We produce students with high score like sausage machine. The mismatch between needs of industries and skills of students has to be revamped. We must also ensure proper professor-teacher relationship wherein a particular thought can relate to each other and hone their joint skills,” he said.