Chennai: Gujarat labour commissioner Jayanti S. Ravi exhorted vice-chancellors of universities in the country to evolve a policy to facilitate mobility of students and faculty across higher educational institutions.Addressing vice-chancellors of universities from the southern states at an event organised by the Association of Indian Universities and Meenakshi Academy of Higher Education and Research on Saturday, Ms Jayanti Ravi said about 100 years ago, when Internet and aircraft did not exist, there was cross movement of students and faculty from one institution in one part of the country to another.
“Students should be able to hop from MU to Northeastern Hill University, that’s how mobility should be. Nobel laureate, Prof Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, is an alumnus of Maharaja Sayajirao (M.S.) University of Baroda, and his parents, who were from Tamil Nadu, were faculty in M.S.University. Prof Radhakrishnan was selected to become vice-chancellor of a North Eastern University,” Ms Ravi said in her keynote address.
Pointing out that Europe had come up with a common Europe framework for reference (CEFR), the labour commissioner who had also been in charge of higher education in Gujarat in the past, said they were looking at imparting outcome-oriented education.
“They look at the skill sets that the graduating student needs. They don’t get into a prescriptive mode of curriculum and are no longer driven by a dead curriculum,” she said.
In his inaugural address, VIT founder-chancellor G. Viswanathan said despite the Sam Pitroda committee’s recommendations to start 1,500 universities in the country, the then Congress-led UPA government did not start even one university. He urged the Association of Indian Universities to formulate eligibility criteria for vice-chancellors as several universities did not have them.
