Education system needs to be flexible, says MHRD

Our Correspondent

Kharar, December 7

The ambitious “Study in India” project launched by the Centre aims to attract two lakh foreign students to India by next year, more than four times the current number, said Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD).

He was speaking during the inauguration session of the two-day Association of Indian Universities (AIU) North Zone Vice-Chancellor’s Meet at Chandigarh University. The ultimate target that the government had set was to take the strength of foreign students to five lakh by 2023, for which the MHRD had identified 30 countries and 130 Indian universities and institutions to focus on in its first phase, Sandhu said.

Vice-Chancellors from more than 65 Central, state, deemed and private universities took part in the meet. The theme for this year’s meet is “Higher education in India: Challenges and opportunities”.

Sandhu advised the universities to shift from contemporary fixed academic learning model to choice-based credit system that offered flexibility to students in terms of wide variety of subjects. “Every individual student has different choices, different level of intelligence and aspirations, so our academic learning model should offer them freedom to exercise their decision and not restrict them to undergo the decade-old education system, which we in India are following,” he said.

Prof Sandeep Sancheti, President, AIU, said, “Like the US, Canada and other developed countries, we in India need to have a common international ability test for foreign students such as ILETS, TOFFEL, GRE so that students from different nations exactly know the complete admission process.”