By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Many colleges in the state cannot keep up with the growing demand in technology because maintenance grants are not provided to them as a result of which these colleges have no choice but stick to the traditional method of teaching, Vice Chancellor of North Eastern hills university (NEHU) Prof AN Rai said.
Delivering the inaugural address at a two-day workshop on ‘Revamping North East Edusat Network’ organised by the Consortium for Educational Communication, New Delhi at NEHU Campus on Wednesday, Prof Rai said “If the government thinks that education is of utmost priority, then it should provide different grants to different educational institutions” while adding that only salaries are being disbursed but not the maintenance grants.
Stressing on the need to expand the existing colleges and universities and set up the same, Prof Rai said this is a great challenge as many new universities in the state have failed to functioned as expected.
Prof Rai also pointed out that with the rise in the percentage of students joining the university, it has become necessary to increase the available facilities and for that to happen, almost half of the faculties’ salaries are being deducted for maintenance processes.
Meanwhile, Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) Director Dr Tilak R Kem lamented that despite the huge population, yet the quantitative achievement in the field of education is not up to the mark citing that there is only about 12 to 13 percent of the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) which is only 23 percent of the world average.
“A need to cater to the other 88 percents of the population is felt and with this in mind, we have come up with a new method to reach to these students by introducing the CEC which produces educational programmes targeted on undergraduate studying in various parts of the country”, Dr Kem said.
The CEC director said the Satellite Interactive Terminal (SITs) has been set up in all the North Eastern states. Commenting on the ability of these Sits to target the specific groups, Dr Kem said students are used to retrieve the documents and data from the net especially during dire need like teachers agitations, examinations and others. He mentioned that there are around 12 SITs and 70 Received Only Terminals (ROT) which provides information only one-sided.