Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, called for the integration of Science, Technology and Medicine with Social Science courses to make students more employable, while speaking at a panel discussion on education fields India must improve to become Incredible at the ThinkEdu Conclave in the city on Wednesday.
“We can’t grow in silos anymore,” Kant said, observing how new universities which have blossomed in the national capital region, are offering multidisciplinary courses which are cutting across domains.
The man behind the Incredible India initiative said that India must use its diversity to its benefit and look across educational domains for development. “Not just Engineering, Medicine, Pure Science or Social Science, all are critical for growth,” Kant said, calling for increased autonomy to nurture globally-renowned institutions.
Kant claimed that the UGC regulations which came out in 2018 allow for more autonomous institutions to come up, but called for freeing regulations on the hiring of faculty. “Universities must be allowed to hire best-in-class faculty from around the world without restraints such as UGC approval and pay scales,” he said.
Former Union Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, who was part of the panel discussion, agreed that development across educational domains was necessary and pointed out the lack of employability skills among graduates.
“South Korea has 70 per cent of Tamil Nadu's population, but it has more skill development institutes than the country,” Ramadoss said, claiming that was the reason behind big market players such as Samsung and Hyundai.
Like Kant, Ramadoss lashed out at the present education system which disregards skills, vocations and knowledge, and said that it has created unemployable youth. “There are BSc Chemistry graduates who don't know a single equation,” he said, narrating a lamentation of one of his constituency members who was unable to employ graduates like this.
Ramadoss also pushed for more course options, pointing out that Anna University has only around 60 courses available while universities such as Stanford offer thousands of courses that allow each individual to hone their strengths and contribute to the country.