Dr S C Jain, Vice Chancellor, Mangalayatan University
On Foreign Collaborations
Certainly, the institutes need to focus on foreign collaboration. We are trying to establish contacts with the foreign institutes so that we can make use of their expertise and also share their resources through video conferencing and satellite communication and knowledge exchange. It opens avenues for enabling our students and teachers to visit different institutes and their students can come to our institutes. To fulfil this objective we have tied up with Vanier College, Quebec, Canada. Their students visited Magalayatan last year.
Regulation in the Higher Education
As far as the regulatory bodies are concerned, our experience is not satisfactory. Universities want these regulatory bodies to be innovative. They should appreciate new initiative and should not impose unnecessary regulation. They all follow the normal traditional path. The problem is that the Indian regulatory structure does not accept innovation easily. We want a regulatory body that will embrace progressive thinking; it should perform well.
Inculcating job oriented skills
We are of the opinion that the institution can achieve growth only when it starts providing quality education for making students employable. If we want our student to be employable, our curriculum should have adequate space to incorporate training programmes. Flexibility is the key for developing employability related skills in a person. Mangalyatan University is trying to follow this objective.
ICT in education
The traditional classroom era has already passed. Once upon a time we used to have a situation where 15-60 students used to sit in a classroom and the teacher used to deliver lectures. In the modern era, we have students choosing to get lectures in virtual classrooms. Video conferences, satellite classes, and classes with audio/video facilities have become very common. Mangaltayan University has been using ICT solutions for a long time.
