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"Higher education must for sustainable development"

Staff Reporter

Ours is the second largest higher education system: V-C

— Photo D. Gopalakrishnan

CONVOCATION: Madras University Vice-Chancellor S. Ramachandran presenting the degree to a candidate at the ninth Special Convocation of Marudhar Kesari Jain College for Women on the college premises in Vaniyambadi on Saturday. C. Lickmichand Jain, Secretary of the college (second from right), and Principal D. Karunakaran (fourth from right) are also in the picture.

VANIYAMBADI: The greatest demand in this modern world was to transform knowledge into application, which could be achieved only through higher education system, Prof. S. Ramachandran, Vice-Chancellor, University of Madras, said here on Saturday.

Participating at the ninth convocation of the Marudhar Kesari Jain College For Women (MKJC), Vaniyambadi, the Vice-Chancellor said that today India had the largest pool of skilled manpower.

"We have realised the important role of higher education especially towards sustainable development through the generation and dissemination of knowledge," he said. Stating that our country had made remarkable progress in higher education since Independence, Prof. Ramachandran said that in 1947 there were only 20 universities in the country and that increased to 357 in 2006, denoting a 18-fold increase over 60 years.

The student enrolment too had increased from 0.2 million in 1950 to 9 million in 2005. "We have the second largest higher education system in the world," he pointed out. However, if the present status was compared with other developed as well as developing countries, we could not ignore the fact that lot more needs to done on this front, he added. Referring to the Gross Enrolment Rate (GER), the Vice-Chancellor said the GER, which measured the percentage population in the age group of 18-23 years enrolled in higher education institutions, was only 11% in 2001.

However, in the case of developed countries like the United States of America (USA), it was 81%. Even in developing countries including Malaysia, Indonesia and China, the ratio was higher than in India.

The GER of women, minorities, socially backward groups such as SC and ST, and rural population were far below that of the general population.

Prof. Ramachandran said that now the time had come to revise the existing curriculum to cater the student community training in communication skills, problem-solving abilities, teamwork and critical thinking strategies to succeed in a global world.

Hence we should go beyond the conventional mechanism of delivery of higher education to alternative ways such as tele-education, e-learning, shift-system and weekend programmes. This would lend flexibility and ability to cater to a much larger population of students.

Earlier, the Vice-Chancellor handed over degrees to the passed-out students. Lakshmi Chand Nahata, chartered accountant, Chennai and R. Dharam Raj Jain, secretary, Sri Jain Gowshala spoke. C. Lickmichand Jain, secretary, MKJC, welcomed and I Angeline Nirmala, Head, Department of English, proposed a vote of thanks.

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