The new brew
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Varsity education is in for some path-breaking changes aimed at making a student industry-ready. But are the students ready?
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It's a cafeteria approach to education as student will be allowed to include subsidiary subjects to the main syllabus. Prof. K.C. Reddy
UNIVERSITY EDUCATION in Andhra Pradesh will never be the same, if the changes proposed at the recent Vice-Chancellors' conference come into force without losing its essence.
The major changes from the students' point of view are those in the structure of three-year and four-year programmes. All courses, beginning with engineering, will aim at preparing students for the career market with specialisation, industry-oriented electives and project works to keep them occupied during the final phases of the course.
Core areas
For a four-year programme, the core courses will be taught for first two years only with the third year being kept apart for specialisation.
The fourth year will have the industry-oriented electives and project works. The structure for three year-programmes will have the first one-and-a-half years for core subjects, one year for specialisation and the final semester for industry-oriented electives and project works.
Student who comes out after college education can also be different in more ways than the academic aspect, the reasons being the soft skills and information technology skills to be imparted in all three-year and four-year programmes.
Training in communication (reading, writing, listening, speaking, articulation, presentation and debate), personality development (motivation, leadership, project management, conflict resolution and time-management) and learning skills (skills for life-long learning and skills for global opportunities) promise to develop the student in several aspects while the IT skill training keeps in view the fact that there is no future without the computer, be it a science student or an arts student.
If these are not enough, the proposed inter-disciplinary structure, for postgraduates in the beginning, is more than just innovative.
The Andhra Pradesh State Council for Higher Education Chairman, K.C. Reddy, calls it a "cafeteria approach" to education since the student will be allowed to include subsidiary subjects of his or her choice to the main syllabus.
Holistic approach
This approach will enable, for instance, an economics student while following the core subject of economics, to study maybe English literature, a little bit of computer science, even zoology and also a particularly interesting paper of engineering. The idea, Prof. Reddy says, is to give student a holistic understanding and preparation.
Changes are hard to accept, harder to implement. But the results, especially when they promise something better? It's time to change, folks.
By Dennis Marcus Mathew
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