The ever-evolving Indian education spectrum is all set to set to see a sea of changes. This time, it comes in the form of a rather big player. Multinational conglomerate Mahindra Group on Friday launched the Mahindra University, with the group's Executive Chairman Anand Mahindra as its Chancellor.
That this comes at a time when the economy is limping back with a measure of uncertainty, the premise of a new normal is shaky at best and several industries are tottering in the aftermath of mounting COVID cases and successive lockdown, could have been surprising. But then again, Anand Mahindra is known to be an unconventional risk taker whose hunches often pay off.
Speaking at the launch, Mahindra said that the university is being launched at the right time. "This is an interesting time. Everyone is speculating about a new world. Learning has increasingly become online and people are looking for new paradigms to be educated on," he said. "We are aiming to educate the future generation to create a better world, following the footsteps of KC Mahindra, who started a scholarship in the 1950s for Indians to study abroad," he added.
Mahindra also said that only one in every eight Indians goes to college right now. "We must aim to get at least one in every four Indians to go to college. For that, there is a need to launch a new university every other day for the next 20 years," he added.
The university, located in a 130-acre campus in Hyderabad will offer Undergraduate, Post Graduate and PhD courses in management, law, education, media, liberal arts and design. The Mahindra Ecole Centrale School of Engineering will also be a part of the university, which hopes to house around 4,000 students and 300 faculty. The university was launched by Anand Mahindra, along with C P Gurnani, Managing Director and CEO, Tech Mahindra, Vineet Nayyar, Chairman, Mahindra Educational Institutions (MEI) and Dr Yajulu Medury, Director of Mahindra Ecole Centrale via video conferencing.
Expanding on the affordability of education, Dr Medury said that the group is looking for ways to provide scholarships to more women, students from the North East and Kashmir. "We won't deny the opportunity to any deserving student, We also have schemes planned to offer a 50 per cent fee waiver," he said. He added that the fee for the engineering programme is Rs 6 Lakh per annum, which hasn't increased for six years.
