Let skills be part of education system

Updated on: Thursday, June 02, 2011

To get students job-ready, every stream must be attached to a skill. Anil Kakodkar, who is drawing up a plan for the state government to reform its higher education sector, felt that every programme, including those in humanities, can have a skill development component. Speaking at the Observer Research Foundation on how we are failing India and its youth: the urgent need for reform in higher education, Kakodkar said, “Skills have to become an essential part of the education system. Learning has to be made a practical experience.”

Kakodkar said, “A science student should have an understanding of humanities, management, and economics and vice versa.” The former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission is heading a committee to look into university reforms in Maharashtra, which he said was still a work in progress. Speaking on the challenges of higher education he spoke of the increasing burden shouldered by universities in supporting its affiliated colleges, but stressed on the need for autonomy and putting money on research.

For holistic growth, a student has to be on a university campus where there is ongoing research and be part of a community of academics. Kakodkar said that it is not possible in affiliated colleges, expanding on the idea of residential universities he studied about on a recent trip to China. Citing an example from China, he said, “There are no affiliated colleges there. Every student has to study at a residential university campus that is spread across 1, 000 acres with 35, 000 students of which 6, 000 to 8, 000 are doing their PhDs.

Admitting that governance is a major hurdle in higher education today and autonomy is the need of the day, Kakodkar said, “We are used to a British Raj, where a few people control many.” Turning the ongoing criticism of IIT graduates taking up lucrative careers which have nothing to do with engineering, Kakodkar said, “I would worry, if a graduate in a particular discipline can’t adapt to another discipline. A good education is where a student learns to adapt to changing scenarios. Although I do worry that lesser people are there for research in technology.”

Let skills be part of education system

More Education news