WUD Awarded ERASMUS+ Grant for Design & Innovation Capacity Building in India

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 22: World University of Design, a UGC recognized university  dedicated to education in the creative domain has been awarded co-funding under the ERASMUS+ programme of the European Union for their project titled ‘Design and Innovation Capacity Building in India’.

Speaking on the occasion Dr . Sanjay Gupta, Vice chancellor, World University of Design said, “We are especially proud as the probability of a scoring an ERASMUS CBHE project award is less than 15% globally and that we could do it in the very first year of our institution. Erasmus programmes have provided a pathway for our students to study in European Union countries, and gain mobility across universities there. Since 2008, EU and India have been engaged in promoting design education. With the launch of the new Erasmus Plus programme (2014-2020), Erasmus has evolved beyond being an educational programme but is more a dynamic socio-cultural exchange between Indian and European Universities.”

Building innovation capacities in the design sector in India is the main intention of the proposal submitted by World University of Design. The proposal addresses the capacity building aim of supporting the modernisation, accessibility and internationalisation of higher education, and the objective of improving the quality of higher education and enhancing its relevance for the labour market and the society. The proposal will seek to address the lack of suitably trained graduates for a rapidly expanding labour market segment expected to require high numbers of new designers by 2020. There is also a structural issue due to weak links between higher education and industry.

EACEA, the executive body of EU received 874 eligible applications out of which 147 applications were selected world-wide for co-funding. WUD will be leading a consortium of six universities including Politecnico the Milano of Italy, Brunel University of UK, and the Aegean University of Greece as European partners and IIIT Delhi & RIMT University, Punjab as partners from India. The project will be supported by CRETHIDEV from Europe.

EACEA expects the project to gain national visibility and have a notable impact on the university-industry collaborative initiatives that it will enable giving the participating Indian HEIs a competitive advantage in terms of responding to labour market demands and needs of society at large. The Design and Innovation Centres, with their online collaboration platforms, will be adequately promoted among stakeholders and encourage cross-sectoral collaboration through online promotion and events.