USTM meet: VCs deliberate on transformative higher education for self-reliant India

Guwahati, March 24: Vice-chancellors of various universities and heads of top institutions took part in the second day of the national conference at the University of Science and Technology Meghalaya (USTM) and deliberated on transformative higher education and how it could pave way for a self-reliant India through ways such as ‘minimum government and maximum governance.’

Chairing the second technical session on “Minimum Government: Maximum Governance- What does it mean for the universities,” on Friday, AICTE vice chairman Abhay Jere said there are many questions on the parameters of ranking of universities.

“We have to evolve our own ranking model, and not rely on the western model. It’s a journey, and we are going in the right direction,” Jere said.

In this context, Sastra University vice-chancellor S Vaidhyasubramaniam said, “For the last one and a half year, we have been working on a very important project informally called ‘One Nation One Data’. We will go with a unified platform, take all the data from the universities just once, and then through this system, we will give data to all the agencies like NAAC, NIRF, UGC. This single pool of data will help higher education institutions.”

Sub-themes of the session were ‘Ideal Model for Higher Education Commission of India (HECI)’, ‘Ranking and Rating: Differential Harmony’, and ‘Autonomy: Issues and Concerns’.

In the third technical session on “Reforms for Holistic Education,” the sub-themes were ‘Promoting Outcome Based Learning’, ‘Integrating skills with higher education’, ‘Innovative Assessment and Evaluation Techniques’.

The fourth technical session had the theme “Creating an ecosystem for Research and Excellence” with sub-themes such as ‘National and International Collaboration for boosting research’; ‘Ways to create research ecosystems on the campus’; and ‘Innovative Methods and Skills for Impactful and socially relevant research’.

It may be mentioned that the three-day national conference of vice chancellors was inaugurated on Thursday by former President of India Ram Nath Kovind.

More than 500 vice-chancellors and directors of IITs, IISc and NITs among other top institutes are taking part.