SHILLONG, April 3: Governor Phagu Chauhan on Monday accentuated the need to shift from the conventional degree to skill development, employability, entrepreneurship and community development programmes, while referring to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The Governor was addressing the 36th Convocation of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) at IGNOU Regional Center Shillong, NEHU campus.
The programme in Shillong was part of the main function, which was conducted at IGNOU Headquarters in New Delhi.
A total of 33 regional centers of IGNOU across India had joined the convocation ceremony.
Stating the importance of making academic programmes more futuristic and need-oriented by the universities, the Governor said, “The NEP puts a greater emphasis on restructuring academic programmes to make them multidisciplinary and holistic. Academic programmes should focus not only on the creation of new knowledge but also to acquire skills required for the job market.”
He contended that to fulfill India’s mission and goal set by NEP 2020, making a collaborative framework between central and state government institutes to identify skill-based bridge courses in the emerging area of professional/vocational programmes is the need of the hour.
The Governor also lauded the IGNOU for taking the national responsibility of promoting and setting benchmarks for Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and online education (OL) systems in India and world.
“IGNOU, which is known to be the world’s largest open university with above three million enrolments of students in different IGNOU programmes, has made significant contributions to democratising higher education in the country by providing access to a large number of aspirants through the open and distance mode, and through online mode,” he said.
“I am happy to note that presently it has learner support services covering the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo Hills also this year there are 1,321 learners being conferred degrees/ diplomas/ certificates for this 36” convocation under the Shillong Regional Centre,” the Governor added.
Established in April 1988, IGNOU Regional Centre Shillong at present has 21 Learner Support Services covering 10 districts of Meghalaya.
This year, 1319 students from Meghalaya were conferred degrees/diplomas/certificates.
