QUALITY IN EDUCATION

Prof. H. S. Dua, Head, Dept. of Electronics & Communication Engineering and Prof. Jitender Kumar, Head, Dept. of Information Technology from Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon attended a one-day Regional Summit on Quality in Education organized by CII on 25 November 2013 at Chandigarh. The summit themed as ‘Quality Education: Scalable with inclusiveness’aimed to bring together renowned academicians, researchers, experts, corporates, financers, educational consultants and students to deliberate and debate on how education can be made more affordable, accessible, relevant to industry needs and job-oriented. The summit completed in three sessions.

The first session focused on the need to develop capable, 'thinking youth' – the future force of the nation. Dr. A. S. Kumaran highlighted many schemes for the improvement of quality in education being launched by the respective state governments. Mr. Purusartha, Director Technical Education Punjab, brought out the importance of skill training as it has a direct and immediate impact on employability.

The second session emphasized onthe role of industry to upgrade the quality of education across technical and higher education institutes. Mr. Rajender Galeria, Industry Executive from Graeur & Weil(India) Ltdstated that teaching should be “learning based”. Mr. V. K. Thadani, CEO NIIT, emphasized that industry should take responsibility to train more people from the technical institutions. Mr. Talwar, Principal Secretary Technical Education Punjab stated that the challenge in technical education is that curriculum courses are old and not meeting today’s industrial requirements. Mr. Chetan Mahajan from HCL Infosystems Ltd.highlighted the benefits of on-line learning which is quite popular abroad, but not in India. Mr. Ravi Aggarwal, Director Pepper & Fuchs India Ltd.emphasizedon increasing the industry – academia interface.

The third and the final session was held by Mr. M. P. Poonia, Director NITTR. He elaborated that teaching is a MISSION. Purpose is more important than needs. A teacher must have feelings and his/her behavior shouldn’t be that of a robot. Mr. Juneja, Director, Lovely Professional University (LPU) enlightened that our students are not ready for job as there is a wide gap between what is taught and what industry wants in terms of skills requirements. He stated that placement is a journey and learning programming languages make students readily employable.

The summit was informative as the attendees learnt about approaches and best practices that can be adopted by the institutions for building a strong education systemfrom Industry and academia.