Educational institutions should focus on quality so that they produced graduates and post-graduates for the world market, Principal Secretary for Higher Education, Government of Tamil Nadu, R. Kannan, said here on Friday.
He inaugurated a two-day regional summit on “Quality in Education – Strategic Sustainable Growth in Higher Education Institutions” organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
The State had achieved a lot of quantity in higher education. The aim of the government was to translate this into quality. It can be done by having highly qualified, motivated and trained faculty. Education should also be inclusive and institutes should be available in backward areas.
In an effort to promote quality, higher education institutions should look at having language laboratories so that the students learnt foreign and more Indian languages, invite overseas faculty for short periods to talk to students and the faculty, have curriculum development cell, and centralised laboratories that were well-equipped and were accessible to all institutions in an area.
Exchange programmes
The institutes should also attract foreign students under exchange programmes. Colleges should have memorandum of understanding so that their students could go abroad at least for one semester.
Analytical learning should be promoted and the process of giving doctorates should be tightened, with emphasis on quality. Colleges should produce graduates and post-graduates for the world market, he said.
Ravi Sam, Chairman of CII Coimbatore Zone, said those in the education sector had an obligation to see that all sections of the society had access to education. It should be a nation-building exercise. Imparting knowledge was the responsibility of the teachers.
S.K. Sundararaman, Convenor of the Education and Industry-Institute Interaction Panel of CII – Coimbatore Zone, said as a region, Coimbatore was almost recognised as a cluster for education.
Some of the developments in the sector were migration of faculty from other countries to India and adopting international accreditation standards. Institutes were likely to have multi-national faculty soon and should have a strategy, a vision, for the future.
K. Senthil Ganesh, Co-Convenor of the Education Panel of CII – Coimbatore Zone, said the education sector had seen tremendous growth in the last two decades in the country. However, currently, sustainability was important and “we should create institutions that will stand the test of time,” he said.
