Ground Reality

   A brain storming meet with focus on Higher Education’s quality, relevance and Development in North East regions was held in Imphal recently and many issues impacting the education set up there were highlighted while the association of Indian Universities (AIU) laid stress on maintenance of peace and harmony in corridors of universities to pave way for healthy environs for higher education. AIU President Prof PB Sharma in his Presidential address at the meet minced no words to articulate his views on higher education scenario and said the agenda for higher education has to be focus on relevance driven Excellence and a Strong connect to Society and industry. “Integration of human values with education need be given a renewed emphasis in the campuses of our universities as we cannot afford to pay a heavy price of loss of human values in an enlightened and specialized work force in a country like ours where loss of values has created unprecedented rise of lust,...

   Unbridled mushrooming of engineering colleges like “Chemist shops” is despairingly blighting national goal of producing engineers of excellence and quality in India, reveals a well-researched book- “Path to Excellence” by academician Pritam B sharma who calls for a thorough review of the policy before it is too late. Driven by a quest to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), the regulatory system in the country allowed “mushrooming” of engineering and technology colleges and deemed universities, thinking that the engineering colleges are like chemist shops required in every nook and corner of the nation, the book mentions. They overlooked that the engineering institutions are required to attract best of talent both in students as well in its faculty community …. “But for the crazy policy makers and regulators responsible for assuring quality this was not the agenda as they primarily focused on achieving an accelerated increase in GER from almost 9% in ...