Dr Rajshree Dhar
Infinity and Zero were moving along the lane, Infinity said, ”I surely hear the fragments of a tale, and the tune of a wail!” and she narrates to Zero: Deep in the glorious vision, she sees a dazzling lightening sail, some stars, and some black holes shining with a constant brightness and blinking with a rhythm. There comes a blue white world out of black hole and appears like that was lost in a cosmic ocean. She welcomes the planet with life on it and she is given the responsibility with full majority of running the educational affairs of her place and the development of Higher Education in particular as the Education has long been seen as a crucial tool for the development, with various education initiatives designed to work towards eliminating poverty, increasing the health of a population or enhancing local economies, among others. She takes a pledge to revamp the entire setup and bring about transparency in all matters. She points down some key tasks:
* Reforms in higher education provision, higher education governance, higher education finance, recruitment and job-placement and inner-institution administration etc. It includes expansion of infrastructure with regional equity, focus on performance, better human resource management, curriculum reform, quality research, creation of an environment that attracts best talent.
* Strengthen key subjects like Mathematics, Science, Economics etc and establishing or strengthening model institutes having these subjects by spending funds to make these global level institutes wherein staff may be hired for the students from the best institutions.
* All competitive tests or admissions in higher educational institutes be linked with Global level tests.
* A governance structure where in every appointments are through transparent and competitive process. Clearly defined roles for various governing bodies for greater accountability through transparency
* Teaching practices have to be changed and effective institutions, & schools need a shared vision, collaborative practices, distributive leadership and a rigorous curriculum and teaching should built skills like communication, research, thinking, creating enquiry, differentiating teaching based on ability, from content to concepts or the big ideas, academic excellence, to get the knowledgeable children who are good communicators, reflective, inquirers, show curiosity and confidence.
* The endeavor to devise appropriate monitoring methods, mechanisms and systems, so that periodic assessment and evaluation of the progress made in achieving the outcomes and outputs of each higher education institute can be undertaken., all institutions, both national, state and private, should carry out self-monitoring and self-evaluation, and should make the results public in efforts to improve and enrich their levels of education and research activities. This should go hand-in-hand with the efforts they make in their evaluations by the Quality Assurance Organizations for Evaluation and focus should be on programme and institutional accreditation.
* Student toppers from global level tests be sent to other developed countries for higher studies on Government expenditure. Nurturing of budding researchers, intellectuals, knowledge innovators is also essential. International exchange and cooperation of students to go overseas for undergraduate and graduate education. The international cooperation of higher education includes academic exchanges, cooperation in sciences, and international infrastructure-sharing. The role of Government in shaping campus international strategies and engagement overseas.
* Funding for teaching and research, including PPP etc. Developing educational hubs needs construction of global campuses utilizing resources of partner countries.
* Composition of governing bodies such as having representation from industry, and civil society etc. The move towards applied research, quantifiable impact and academia industry partnerships is required. In present times, quality in Higher Education is a multidimensional concept which should embrace all the activities like teaching and academic programmes, research, staff, students, infrastructure, equipments, facilities and above all academic environment. With the emergence of new businesses and other employment opportunities, our students need specific skill-based learning; therefore diploma programmes are the need of the hour. It is immensely significant to establish a connection among the students, trainers, and industry professionals via skill-oriented programmes of education. It is high time that the institutions come up with newer innovation, industry oriented education and quality research.
* Developing the quality of research is a priority for entering into an global knowledge economy. The PhD training incorporates formal research training alongside additional courses on topics such as leadership and management, conference organization, and communicating specialist ideas to non-specialist audiences among others. More involvement in field visits, discussions, conferences/workshops, interviews, special studies, meetings of academic and administrative staff. The need of the hour is to promote research both for students and teachers from the college to orient them towards knowledge production.
* The use of new information and communication technologies, especially of internet, has expanded dramatically during the past few years. The digitization of books and open access to research can shape the research and teaching and cutting the costs too. New technologies are transforming the way in which people live, work, and communicate. The new technologies have brought about easy access to new pools of information and learning resources and new learning opportunities for learners. Integration of new technologies into educational settings has emerged as a priority task in the education sector. The use of ICT in education remains limited and there is a need to accelerate efforts to use ICT for fostering quality education.
* Contribution of individual work of students, as well as originality, individuality, and morality. The students should be equipped with knowledge and skill through mathematical approach so that they become intelligent citizens having creativity and innovativeness.
* Privatization of Institutions under control of Govt. to increase GER but elite higher education is preferred over mass higher education. Quality output should be there.
* To develop a faculty development and support system by involving a large number of academic leaders who are academically sound, innovative, and with great potentials. and charged with providing training to thousands of talented junior faculty members and improving the quality of the whole faculty.
On watching Infinity deep in her thoughts, Zero interrupted by talking of the welfare of the blue planet. He said that we are perturbing our beautiful planet by polluting the atmosphere by using our technologies. We value short term advantages above the welfare of earth. We live in a world where things change. We can do science to improve our lives. Quality of life of people can be improved through research and development activities. Healthcare and Sanitation, green environment, pollution free environment etc can be the product of research. Every individual can be trained and we have to change the mind set up of each and every individual to have positive outlook towards all and corruption free on this Earth. For that we can arrange debates, brain storming sessions, for the methods and practical solutions for changing the mind set up of every individual into positive outlook. With this, Infinity and Zero reached to their destination with a promise to meet next day.
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel