‘Industry should be the focus of curriculum’

NEw new delhi: speech production at the HT hereafter Ed Conclave, Dr VS Kanchana Bhaaskaran, the vice premier of the Vellore bring of Technology underlined the urgent need for reimagining the university education for a tech led future citing “rapid technological disruptions”, “skill gaps” and the need to turn the universities into key “nodes for national innovation industrial ecosystem.”Dr Bhaaskaran said that under the reimagined university model, the institutes should be made flexible and learner centric with multidisciplinary pathways available to students and competency based assessment.She advocated for industry designed dynamic curricula and mission driven annual projects for curriculum redesign. “Every year, we should be able to change and modify the curricula based on the requirements of the industry. Every institute with autonomy should be able to do this and members from industries should be on the advisory board,” the vice chancellor said while adding that students should be able to spend 50-60% of their time on real tech problems. She also cited innovations in curriculum being used in VIT with core subjects, professional cores and electives with options of soft skills and multi-disciplinary pathways.“For the Indian population and countries like ours, both quality and quantity consciousness are important at this scale,” she added.The vice chancellor said there are certain “policy enablers” which direct the implementation roadmap for these changed including IT infrastructure upgrade in the first phase, comprehensive faculty training in the second phase, introduction of flexible curricula with industry participation from laboratories to teaching.Research and innovation is needed for national impact, such as the various AI tools available now, she said. Al tools for curriculum design and content creation, adaptive learning and automated assessments, recognition and incentives for innovation in teaching, mission-oriented research clusters and industry-funded labs are tools that are being now for improving the performance and enhancing the ability of students.“We had a lab developed in our institute, a mail a was sent out regarding it, and within 24 hours, the professor got over 1000 responses. This is how receptive students are to hands-on training… The most important goal here is to ensure a meeting point between industry and institutions,” she added.She further said that all these tools have shown measurable outcomes. As examples, she pointed to student employability index, average portfolio growth, startups/incubation projects launched, patents and industry-joint innovations, faculty industry sabbaticals completed, industry co-authored publications and product releases, and joint labs in campus and industry, and centres of excellence.She also said that all the growth has been fueled by the multiple government initiatives and missions especially in the area of AI, semiconductors and CPS and institutions should also focus on student interest in these areas that are large industries already and growing at a rapid pace.