Vishakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) [India] Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu has appealed to the people to study, analyse and debate the draft of New Education Policy and not to come to hasty conclusions.
Observing that core issues of education were very important and deserve the attention of all stakeholders, he said that reducing the load of school bags, promoting sports, inculcating morals, scientific and rationale temperament, history and the contribution of the freedom fighters should become a part of the curriculum.
Inaugurating a two-day conference on ‘Industry Academy Interaction for Improvement of Quality of Academics’ organised by the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy (IIPE) here, Naidu called for establishing a symbiotic relationship between academia and the industry to create an ecosystem for innovation to thrive and generate employment for the youth.
Calling for a revamp of the education system so that the graduating students were fully equipped with skills to meet the needs of the industry or agriculture or have the aptitude and skills of a risk-taking entrepreneur, the Vice President said the students must not only be employable but also possess life skills, language skills, technological skills, and entrepreneurial skills to enable them to be gainfully employed or self-employed.
Pointing out that the Indian universities did not figure in the top 100 ranking global universities, the Vice President urged universities and educationists to introspect and improve the standards.
“We cannot have a system that operates at a sub-optimal level. We cannot have an education system that produces a large number of unskilled and unemployed youth. Every year, lakhs of students are passing out of the portals of higher education institutions with a majority of them lacking employable skills,” he said.
“All stakeholders need to work together to vastly improve the quality of education and research. There is also a need to promote academia-industry knowledge clusters for promoting innovation-oriented research. India should be among the leading countries in publishing quality research papers in peer-reviewed international journals, and in obtaining patents for innovations.”
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]