Vellore: Chancellor Dr G Viswanathan of Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) on Friday urged students to make use of online education in addition to the offline mode “because we need to prepare our students for the global market.”
"India can become an advanced nation only by providing quality education. Our Prime Minister has set an ambitious target to make our country a five-trillion dollar economy and later we would want to become a ten-trillion dollar economy.
All this will be possible only if we ensure good quality education to our students", Dr Viswanathan said in his presidential address at the inaugural of VIT's Online Learning Institute (VITOL) at the VIT campus here.
He said as per the 2011 census, 14 crore Indians are eligible for higher education but only 3.5 crore have access to it. "That's why our country's Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) is a mere 25 per cent", he regretted.
He recalled with pride that "almost all" the VIT graduates got placed in good jobs through campus interviews.
"This year we had over 700 companies recruiting students through our campus placement," he said.
Dr. Jagat Bhushan Nadda, Director, UGC's Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) inaugurated the studio facility at VITOL, in the presence of VIT's vice-president Dr. Sekar Viswanathan and executive director Dr. Sandhya Pentareddy.
Dr Nadda said the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) had become the order of life, being used in multiple fields across the spectrum such as education, healthcare, tourism and online ticket-booking.
“Government is considering the increase of GER to 30 percent by 2020 and the only way is through digital education as that would ensure everyone gets higher education. We cannot start a university or a college every day; we already have 900 Universities and 40,000 colleges in the country,” he said.
About CEC's role in higher education, Dr. Nadda said the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) had 10 education channels and 87 courses. “This time we have come up with 350 massive open online course (MOOC) courses which have been put up on the platform. We have got about two lakh students enrolled in just two years for the CEC courses,” he said.
Dr. Nadda congratu-lated VIT for setting up a studio for online education and said, “I am sure VIT will march ahead in this arena, considering their reputation”, he said.
