Institutional transformation for making a difference in education

Updated on: Thursday, April 07, 2011

To create world-class institutions, it is essential to introduce the 4C's of institutional transformation, namely centres of excellence, sponsored chairs, consulting, and corporate classrooms, Nagendra V. Chowdary, Centre Director, Aegis Global Academy, Coimbatore, said here on Saturday.

At the graduation day of the Coimbatore Institute of Management and Technology, he said these 4C's were based on some of the best practices of world-class institutions and adoption of these would lead to a difference in education.

“Centres of excellence are physical or virtual centres focussed on specific issues. They concentrate on existing capacity and resources to facilitate collaboration across disciplines and across organisations on long-term programmes and projects of direct relevance to human needs and aspirations. These centres should serve five basic needs of support, guidance, shared learning, measurements and governance,” Mr. Chowdary said.

The next C of institutional transformation, namely ‘chairs' were unfortunately not present in the higher education scenario of India. “The corporate houses from whom the research is meant can be invited to set up an Endowment Chair in any of the chosen areas of excellence”.

On the third C, ‘consulting', Mr. Chowdary said that many people had the wrong notion that consulting had to be started in a big way. “This need not be. Make a small but steady beginning. If you can make a difference to small shops near your institution, I am sure your consulting practice deserves to continue to exist. Then, it is a matter of scaling up”.

On corporate classrooms, he said they were not about guest lectures and industry interactions. It was about delivering democratically designed course modules.

“What it entails is engaging with a company on a long-term basis by chiselling a group of students as per a company's specific requirement so that there is a definite commitment on the board from both the company as well as the institution. These modules can be integrated by understanding what the company wants. A jointly designed curriculum may be put together and can be executed by the faculty as well as an executive from the company,” Mr. Chowdary said.

A. Shakeel Ahmed, Deputy Secretary, University Grants Commission, gave away the degree certificates.

K.A. Chinnaraju, Secretary, and P. Natarajan, Principal, of the college, spoke.

Institutional transformation for making a difference in education

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