Design education curriculum to make students lead change, VP Dhankhar tells V-Cs

Udhagamandalam, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Friday appealed to Vice Chancellors of universities to design education curriculum to prepare students to lead the change and define its trajectory.

Also, he urged them to engage themselves in sharing with one another, use technology, and not ‘be an island in yourselves.’

“It is not time to be standalone because this challenge has to be fixed. And we have no time,” the Vice President said while addressing the inaugural session of the two-day conference of Vice Chancellors of state, central and private universities that commenced at the Raj Bhavan here.

“Our curriculum must be designed to prepare students not just to respond to change, but to lead the change and to define its trajectory,” he said. Our administrative structures must be the guiding principle to others, he stressed.

“From this platform, I wish to indicate that the National Education Policy is not a government policy. It is a policy for the nation. Therefore, I appeal, it is time for us all to adopt it, understand it, execute it, and reap the fruits,” Dhankhar said.

The NEP aligned with our civilisational ethos and encouraged multidisciplinary learning. It gave priority to Indian languages and envisions education as the development of the person, not just employability.

“The most significant aspect of the NEP is that it allows students to learn in their mother tongue. It has got us out of the colonial regime. Even medicine and engineering in local languages, which could not be entertained at one point of time, is getting shaped on the ground,” the Vice President said.

He noted that not only Bharat but also the entire world faced formidable challenges, including rapid technological disruption. A paradigm shift is taking place every moment. The global order, on this count, was becoming increasingly complex. Every facet of life was being affected.

“Therefore, it is in the lap of universities ably led on the front foot by Vice-Chancellors, to act as stewards of India’s academic landscape. More the challenges, greater their formidability, the more we must rise as impregnable, not only to overcome them, but to deliver results for the nation and the world,” he said.

Faculty availability, faculty retention, and sometimes faculty attrition was among the challenges faced by the Vice-Chancellors.

Tamil Nadu has been home to widely acclaimed learning centres like Kanchipuram and Ennayiram, which must be considered our North Star.

He asserted that accessibility and affordability of education was vital, but what was more significant was that in a world changing so fast, accessibility and affordability has to be of quality education. “Fortunately, in our country, this is emerging as national priority, ” he said.

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