Institutions must be "locally engaged, globally networked": IIT Delhi director

NEW DELHI: Indian higher educational institutions must become multidisciplinary and student-centric, find diverse sources of funding and have a diverse faculty with "a large chunk drawing their remuneration from more than one source" over next five years. These are some of the goals on the list of to-do's Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi director, V Ramgopal Rao, drew up after participating in a series of webinars and discussions on the National Education Policy 2020 on September 18.

He even listed out the changes our higher educational institutions must go through in the next five years which are “Inclusion of multidisciplinary educational offerings”; “Institution become locally engaged and globally networked”; “Innovation and entrepreneurship become major drivers”; “Institutes need to become a demonstrator for conversion of knowledge into wealth and have diversified financial structure”; “Be student centric with flexible curriculum tightly integrated with out-of-class learning, include social sciences, ethics, leadership skills and creativity’; “Have a diverse set of faculty with a large chunk of faculty drawing their remuneration from more than one source”; “Hubs for industrial research and development with corporates to engage with academia on a collaborative relationship model rather than no a transactional model.”

“Connected to society and become solution providers to societal problems. We must use the global knowledge base for addressing these societal challenges. NEP must become India's "Morrill" moment,” said Rao referring to the American Morrill Act or Land Grant College Act of 1862 under which proceeds from land grants were earmarked for expanding and funding higher education, especially in agriculture and other professional fields.

Connected to the society and become solution providers to societal problems. We must use the global knowledge base for addressing these societal challenges. NEP must become India's "Morrill" moment. https://t.co/uwbD1akzNd

— Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao (@ramgopal_rao) September 18, 2021

Adding on he said that he follows this point of view and for far too long the institutes have been following a templated approach.

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