HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday outlined quality research and innovation as the foremost challenges for India in the area of higher education when the country was treading to meet global standards.
“lack in innovation and quality research is the foremost challenge before the country. Quality expansion and teaching reform is the need of the hour,” Javadekar said chairing a three-day national conference of vice-chancellors from across the country.
The HRD Minister further emphasised on creating a positive and lively environment to enhance the quality of education in all central and private universities.
“It is time to show India's prowess to the world in the field of education. The country hosts many world-class educators who are working in silos and they need to break walls and come forward to share their knowledge,” Javadekar said.
“It has been found that many Indians, including few parliamentarians, are among the world’s top teachers and the country should make the best use of such resources,” he added. Flagging the issue of plagiarism in PhD thesis, Javadekar said, “A software has been developed which will be made available to all universities to stop plagiarism and will be available free of cost on the UGC website”.
Besides vice-chancellors of various universities across the country, the meeting was also attended by renowned educationists, heads of statutory professional councils and directors of inter-university centres of the UGC.
Improving the quality of education by universities, best practices adopted in this regard and imparting vocational skills to students in higher educational institutions were also on the agenda besides discussing the action taken on recommendations made during the vice-chancellors’ conference last year.