Aligarh Muslim University Vice-Chancellor Lieutenant General (retired) Zameer Uddin Shah on Friday said the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development should not “bombard” the V-Cs with two-three instructions every day.
He was speaking at the two-day “North Zone Vice-Chancellors’ Meet” to deliberate on “Celebrating Success in Higher Education — Best Practices”. The meet, organised by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and hosted by Amity University in Noida, was attended by 90 V-Cs from across north India.
Problems discussed
“When higher education is talked about in India,” said AIU secretary-general Furqan Qamar, “more often, problems are discussed rather than accomplishments or achievements. Whereas, people outside India, both in developing and developed world, hold Indian higher education in high regard.”
Stating that the potential of every Indian student is very high, he said all they need to shine is a good ecosystem and contemporary facilities.
Talking about the highly-regulated Indian education sector, Prof. Qamar said the essential idea behind regulations was to bring order and maintain the quality of educational institutions.
Efficacy of regulations
However, he added that the efficacy of regulations is being debated of late and they are being taken as barriers to world class universities. Therefore, Prof. Qamar said, there is need to re-think regulations in the country.
Losing focus
According to D. S. Chauhan, the AIU president and V-C of the Mathura-based GLA University, the functioning of universities is affected due to the crunch of professors, lack of support from the government and crippled autonomy. He added that streamlined and rigid systems permitted very less autonomy in universities, as a result of which these universities lose focus.
Plenary and technical sessions were held on topics such as “Fostering Quality through Curriculum Innovation for Developing Global Talent”, “Best Practices in the Use of ICT for Promoting Flexibility in Higher Education – Challenges and Strategies”, “Research, Innovation and Commercialization in Higher Education – Best Practices” and “Best Practices in Industry Academic Collaborations”.
