Maintaining Quality Education Is A Real Issue: AICTE Chairman

“Quality education is a must and amidst the flexible teaching–learning patterns, we need to follow the rules which are simpler and thus enhance the educational standards,” said Prof TG Sitharam, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) at 6th BW Education Annual Higher Education Conference held at Chennai on Wednesday.

The AICTE Chairman said that maintaining quality education is a real issue. Key factors like multidisciplinary education, teacher’s training, research and innovation need special attention to grow in higher education.

“Students today don’t consider education as a lifetime learning, for them, it’s a platform to bag future jobs,” said Sitharam pointing at the job-oriented educational system India has adopted in the past hundred years.

He said, gone are the days of ‘Gurukul’ teaching and learning, a value-based educational system that belonged to our nation, we need to rekindle that stressed the professor.

He further emphasised the loop between industry and institution, which developed a broad spectrum called ‘placement’ thus helping students to achieve the industry role. Back then in the 80s, there were only two agencies that helped young engineers to get jobs. Today disruption has changed the whole pattern and communication and mobile technology have fueled greater opportunities, added Sitharam.

Today if we consider the fast-paced tech world, speed is a must and so making students ready for future jobs is an alarming requirement as job profiles are either changing or getting completely vanished with the introduction of technology, said the Chairman underlining the fact that we at AICTE are thus responsible for developing future job students.

He added skill development, teachers’ training, vocational education, regular classes, distance classes, etc., as a component of the same teaching process and needs wider acceptance.  Breaking the old mindset which back then gave the least importance to online learning before Covid.

Sitharam further addressed, AICTE signed MoUs, its Transformative Initiatives, Mandatory Internship, NEAT, Indian Knowledge System, Multidisciplinary Education Idea Lab Networks and I-Stem in detail.