Indian higher education institutions need to explore innovative funding options to meet future challenges, said All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) Chairman Prof. Anil Dattatreya Sahasrabudhe here on Thursday.
He was the chief guest for the concluding session of South Zone Vice-Chancellor’s Conference organised by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and hosted by GITAM Deemed to be University in the online mode.
He said instead of depending more on government funding universities must create new funding options to augment revenues. He also suggested that universities should strengthen the university-industry partnerships and effective utilisation of alumni network to improve financial status.
He briefed about AICTE’s new initiative on multilingual translation of learning resources of various engineering subjects. He also informed that 42% of engineering and medical students were showing interest to learn subjects in their mother tongue.
Currently, Swayam courses were being machine translated to provide quality content to engineering students, especially from underprivileged sections who might be bright but lack fluency in English and suffer from an inferiority complex. The translated works would empower them and provide a more enabling environment to pursue higher education, Mr. Sahasrabudhe added.
He further said that to encourage multidisciplinary approach AICTE is now permitting the education institutions for merging technical and non-technical colleges running under the same trust or society at various locations in the city.
Association of Indian Universities (AIU) Secretary General Pankaj Mittal said that the association was actively engaged with online workshops, teacher training programmes and online placement and training activities.
She said AIU was preparing a document basing on the vice-chancellor’s suggestions and recommendations on NEP-2020 to submit the same to government.
AIU vice-president Col G. Thiruvasagam, GITAM Deemed to be University vice-chancellor Prof. K. Sivaramakrishna and others participated in the discussions.
During the conference, vice-chancellors suggested removal of GST on education institutions, funding support on a par with central universities and research funding support to private deemed to be universities.
