Chief Minister for separate vocational, sports, technical universities in JBVC

By Vikas Vaidya

Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan has consented to an idea of setting up separate vocational, sports and technical universities in the State, proposed by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan. This idea was put in the meeting of Joint Board of Vice-Chancellors (JBVC) held at Mumbai, chaired by the Governor as Chancellor of State universities, at State Guest House, Shayadri, on Tuesday. The meeting was attended by Vice-Chacellors of Non-Agricultural Universities.
Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan; Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar; Minister for Higher and Technical Education Rajesh Tope; Minister for Medical Education Dr Vijay Kumar Gavit; Minister for Public Health Suresh Shetty; Minister for State for Higher and Technical Education D P Sawant; Minister of State for Finance Rajendra Mulak; Chief Secretary Dr Jayantkumar Banthia; Additional Chief Secretary, Public Health T C Benjamin; Additional Chief Secretary, Medical Education Anand Kulkarni; Principal Secretary, Higher and Technical Education Sanjaykumar; and Vice Chancellors, Pro Vice Chancellors of non-agricultural universities attended the meeting.
The meeting, held generally in the first week of August, was held belatedly without assigning any official reason. Chief Minister proposed a separate university for Sports, asserting that sports needed proper attention and encouragement.
Sources revealed, Chavan pointed out that the employability saw degradation. CM said that the education needs to be more skill-based and of vocational type. With this view, CM mooted an idea of floating separate vocational university.
With rise in institutions that are imparting technical education, the need arises of creating separate university for this sector. Stating this, CM has also proposed a separate technical university. At present, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University (BATU) at Lonere which is having Dr Raju Mankar as Vice-Chancellor. BATU is doing well,
so technical university may come up at BATU itself which was indicated by CM.
Aurangabad’s Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University is the first university in the State that has started five year vocational courses which was mentioned in the meeting and the efforts of it’s Vice-Chancellor Dr Vijay Pandharipande were appreciated. Government has asked other universities to start vocational courses in industrial automation, pharma, Information and Technology, Banking, Insurance and Finance and Automobile.
The contents of the three reports submitted by Dr Anil Kakodkar, Dr Arun Nigwekar and Dr Ram Takwale came up for discussion. The recommendations made in the report should be implemented by the universities as early as possible, K Sankaranarayanan opined.
The suggestions given by Dr Vilas Sapkal, Vice-Chancellor, Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University too were accepted in the meeting. Dr Vilas Sapkal had suggested to bring uniformity in evaluation methodology, evaluation programme, academic program. He had also suggested to have patent and innovation cell. It was also welcomed.
Governor said that every university should create its own open education resource. Most of the universities have supported the credit based semester and grading system. Recently Government of India had constituted a committee which would be submitting its report within a week on Credid based semester and grading system. Universities are expected to implement it from the year 2014.
Shetty appeals for organ donation: An appeal was made regarding organ donation. Suresh Shetty, Minister of Public Health said that students can be of great help as far as organ donation was concerned. An awareness could be brought among students through National Service Scheme (NSS). He said that his department would organise lectures for students to inform them on the issue of organ donation.
University act amendment draft to be finalised: The draft of amendment in university act recommended by Dr Nigwekar, Dr Kakodkar, Dr Takwale committees would be finalised and within a month it would be placed in the cabinet meeting, informed Rajesh Tope, Higher and Technical Education Minister. He also informed in the meeting that his department had received 7-8 proposals of self-financed universities. Soon, the proposals would be scrutinised. To improve teaching quality, 2000 teachers would be trained at YASHADA, pointed Tope.

Chancellor asks other universities to emulate Mumbai on virtual classroom

A special mention was made in the meeting regarding the proper use of technology at Mumbai University. Under the leadership of Dr Rajan Welukar, Vice-Chancellor, Mumbai university is taking various measures of e-governance. Mumbai University recently began Harvard virtual classroom. This is the first of its kind in the whole country. Citing this example, Chancellor has asked other universities to emulate Mumbai University as far as Information Communication and Technology (ICT) was concerned. Mumbai recently inked the Memorandum of Understanding with Mind-Logic for on-line valuation. It would be first university in Maharashtra to do so. A report of Rajesh Agrawal (Secretary of Information and Technology) was discussed and every university has been asked to implement the recommendations of Agrawal committee phase-wise.
 

Four crores to Dr Pravinchand Gandhi Chair

Mumbai University got Rs 4 crore for Dr Pravinchand Gandhi Chair. Dr Gandhi was a legend in banking sector. Mumbai University will begin this Chair at its Management College. For this Chair, Chief Minister and Indinan Merchant Chamber have given Rs 2 crore each.

Chancellor appeals for ‘Sanskar’ in education

Chancellor K Sankaranarayanan appealed universities to give lessons of moral values at university level education. He said that ‘Sanskar’ would solve the problems including sexual harassment of women, girls which was the issue of everybody’s worry. According to him ‘Sanskar’ can bring down the crime incidents that take place in the campuses. This would make campuses free of such incidents especially women-related crime, Governor said.

Colleges sans teachers may face action

Chancellor was a bit disturbed on the issue of colleges running sans full-time teachers. Most of the colleges in the State are running sans qualified full-time Principals and teachers. Governor indicated serious action against such colleges. According to him the colleges not having full-time teaching faculty can not give a quality education. He also blasted universities and colleges for reluctance to go for accreditation being done by National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC).