Vinod Tawde

Education minister Vinod Tawde has suggested that higher education should have a development plan that should be updated every five years to ensure it is industry relevant and beneficial to the students too. He added that the rigid format of education should be made flexible wherein students can learn what they want. Mr Tawde was speaking at the higher education summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

According to a spokesperson of the CII, the summit on higher education was intended to provide a platform for the industry and academia to discuss the lacunae in the education system and come up with a solution that would be relevant and beneficial to all stakeholders.

While speaking on the same, Mr Tawde said, “The new syllabus for higher education in Maharashtra will focus on being relevant to requirements of industry, which in turn, employs students who pass out from the academic institutions. The new University Act which will be implemented soon will ensure higher education in Maharashtra gets an ‘updated’ and ‘relevant’ fresh look, catering to the needs of all sections of society.”

Admitting to the need for improving and updating the syllabus regularly, Mr Tawde said, “The road-map for urban planning is drawn by a Development Plan (DP), I wonder why higher education can also not have its own DP This DP should be relevant to the market scenario and job opportunities, and so, should be updated every five years or so.”

Dwelling on the issue of providing opportunities for students to study what they wanted, Lord Meghnad Desai, Emeritus Professor of Economics, London School of Economics said, “If Google can provide one with information that is necessary, we need to re-think the relevance emphasis on imparting knowledge only through colleges — what sort of logic are we following in having universities, and what purpose is served by theoretical knowledge and learning academic.”