Age of incremental change is over, its time for exponential growth in higher education: Govt

President Kovind and Education Minister Pradhan with top leadership of IITs, Varsities

Indian higher education must adopt exponential growth, and systemic reform to move ahead, compete globally and have a stronger industry connect to produce efficient workforce, the Union government told universities and IITs on June 8.

At Rashtrapati Bhavan, Indian universities, IITs and other institutions of national importance had gathered during last two days and discussed issues such as international rankings of higher education institutions, collaboration between academia and industry and policy-makers. Besides, they deliberated on education and research in emerging and disruptive technologies.

“The age of incremental change is gone,” said union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and called upon higher educational institutes to target “exponential growth towards building future-ready workforce”.

Speaking about the challenges and opportunities in the new world propelled by technology, the minister said, "India has shown its technological prowess in various initiatives like UPI, Direct Benefit Transfer, Aadhar and we must build upon this strength and make a future-ready workforce to embrace the changes arising out of Industrial Revolution 4.0.”

The minister also spoke about the start-up ecosystem and how institutions should nurture students to be entrepreneurs.

Nunzio Quacquarelli, founder and chief executive of global ranking body QS, gave a presentation on international rankings and advised on how Indian institutions can improve their performance. IIT Kanpur Director Abhay Karandikar articulated on how Indian institutions are working towards the path of progress.

The President of India is the Visitor of 161 Central Institutes of Higher Education. Out of 161 institutes, 53 attended the Conference physically while others joined virtually.

President Ram Nath Kovind also honoured some of the donors including Ajit Issac, Radha Parthasarathy, N.S. Parthasarathy, Sudha Gopalakrishnan and Kris Gopalakrishnan among others, who have made generous contributions to top institutions like IITs and IISc.

Staffing and human resource firm Quess Corp founder Ajit Issac and his wife Sarah Isaac, in March this year, had committed Rs 105 crore to establish a Centre for Public Health at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). Before that, IT firm Mindtree co-founders Subroto Bagchi and N.S. Parthasarathy, along with their spouses, had donated Rs 425 crore to IISc to establish an 800-bed multi-specialty hospital along with a postgraduate medical school.

India has a massive education sector that caters to nearly 300 million students both in schools, colleges and universities. While there are islands of successes in Indian education landscape, it largely suffers from quality issues. The new education policy has underlined the need to improve quality and boost research among a host of other suggestions.