Ashoka University has selected Juniper Networks®, the industry leader in network innovation, to provide the network infrastructure to support its ambitious goal of growing tenfold in the next five years. The university, which is breaking the mold of higher education in India by aiming to be a world-class liberal arts college, is also setting a new benchmark with cutting-edge network technology to accelerate learning and strengthen collaboration.

The new, privately-endowed institution deployed a complete campus network infrastructure running on Juniper Networks Junos® operating system. The combination of Juniper’s switching, routing and security platforms, tightly integrated under the same management system, will greatly simplify the task of scaling the campus network over multiple phases as Ashoka University goes through its planned tenfold growth in students over the next five years.

Chandresh Kumar, Head – IT, Ashoka University said, “Our students can and should expect an interactive educational experience in the classrooms, in dorm rooms, from anywhere on-campus and eventually off-campus through our distance learning programme. Our network has, therefore, been designed from the outset to be capable of delivering high-definition video streams to hundreds and eventually thousands of computers and tablets. Juniper Networks is fully engaged in helping us realise our vision of delivering a world-class liberal arts education in India, with a high-performance network that will enable us to scale across new learning spaces.”

Amajit Gupta, Country Manager, India, Juniper Networks said, “The opening of Ashoka University represents a very exciting development in the field of tertiary education in India, and Juniper Networks is very proud to be a part of it. This is a showcase for the capabilities of our campus network architecture, delivering non-stop performance with end-to-end security that can be scaled to support the high-bandwidth demands of thousands of students and faculty, on and off-campus. I believe this project sets a new benchmark for university networking in India.”

Fanshawe College, leading public community college of Canada, has announced an MoU with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) for a partnership to train one lakh youth over the next 10 years. The tie-up, initiated during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Canada early this year, was operationalised in New Delhi coinciding with the visit of Prof Peter J Devlin, President, Fanshawe College to India.

Fanshawe College, a leader in vocational training, will collaborate with NSDC to build training capacity in areas of automotive and apparels along with sectors like hospitality, construction and aviation.

With the MoU in place, Fanshawe’s role will include:

• Developing expertise in areas of curriculum development, teaching and learning resources development;
• Occupational standards;
• Testing and certification;
• Labour market information system;
• Providing expertise in teacher training; and,
• Setting up centers of excellence in developing and delivering these programmes.

In subsequent agreements facilitated by the NSDC, Fanshawe College has entered into an MoU with Badve Engineering, which is a large automotive product manufacturer based in Pune, India to collaborate in skill-development in Automotive/Manufacturing sector. Badve Engineering has a turnover of $300 millions with manufacturing units in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. They will be rolling out training programmes at multiple locations based on Fanshawe’s curriculum and quality standards.

Initially, the area of focus will be Welding, Robotics and CNC Operator. This training (Welding) will start in February 2016 and it targets to skill 50,000 people over the next 10 years. Initially, the training will be delivered in Alwar (Rajasthan), Pune (Maharashtra) and Ahmedabad (Gujarat) but it will be then rolled out to several other locations, where Badve manufacturing is located.

Similarly, Fanshawe College also signed an MoU with Modelama Skills to create capacity in skills education in apparel and textile sectors. Modelama Skills Pvt Ltd runs vocational training centers as the implementing Agency for the Ministry of Textiles and other central and state governments. With more than 25 vocational training centers in place, and another 30 scheduled to start soon, the mandate is to skill 50000 people in India over the coming few years. The operations are expected to be spread over NCR, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, and North Eastern Region and the focus area is textiles, apparel and handicrafts etc.

This agreement will also focus on extending vocational education to Indian High Schools so that the Indian students can be skilled, while they are in grade 8 to grade 12. This training will align to NVEQF standards and will provide credits to students, who are looking to study in Canada in future.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has approved setting up of six new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Andhra Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Goa, Jammu, Kerala and Karnataka. The Cabinet further gave its approval for operationalisation of these IITs initially by forming of Societies under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 in order to give a legal status to them till the amendment for their incorporation in The Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 is enacted.

Each new IIT will have an initial intake of 180 students in its first year from temporary/transit which would increase to 450 in the second year and to 928 (840 Undergraduates, 80 Postgraduates and 8 PhD) in the third year of their operation.

The total cost for running these IITs is Rs 1,411 crore and will be incurred between 2015-16 and 2018-19.

The new IITs will be operated from their temporary campuses for the initial period of three years before shifting into their permanent campuses in the fourth year. Each IIT will have a sanctioned strength of faculty members, with a faculty-student ratio of 1:10.