Be lifelong learners to make it big in life: UGC Chairman

UGC Chairman suggests students learn constantly, take risks & learn from failures to access new opportunities & excel in multi-disciplinary education. NEP 2020 sets direction to scale up quality of education & institutions must invest in academic & research excellence.

hyderabad

Chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar has suggested that students keep learning constantly, be prepared to take risks in life/career and learn from failures to grow further, if they want to be relevant and have access to the new opportunities in the fast changing world.

Addressing students at the 13th convocation of the ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education here on Friday, he said by graduating from the university they were stepping into a non-deal world that had both challenges and opportunities. The challenges ranged from unstable economic systems, climate change to gender discrimination.

At the same time, there were several opportunities before them with the country becoming the fifth-largest economy in the world and the third-largest ecosystem for start-ups, the UGC Chairman said adding that the higher education system should be ready to take advantage of these opportunities by scaling up the quality of education.

The National Education Policy 2020 had set the direction to scale up the quality of education by providing personalised, individualised and learning outcome-based education, where students could excel in multi-disciplinary education, Prof. Jagadesh Kumar said. He asked the higher education institutions to invest in academic and research excellence, and develop systems that fostered freedom to carry outstanding research to meet the local and national needs.

To make it happen, the institutions were required to create an environment to provide maximum opportunities to students and faculty. He asked the teachers to adapt to new teaching and assessment methods to be relevant to the rapidly changing education landscape.

Chancellor of the University and former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India C. Rangarajan said higher education was important to build a nation. Although the country had progressed a lot in education, there was still a need to strengthen higher education by reforming it in three dimensions — access, equity and quality.