Chandigarh, December 08, 2018: “The target set by Government of India to attract 500,00 by 2023 could be easily achieved by Indian Universities but the higher education institutions in the country need to redraft their academic model which are suitable to meet the aspirations of the International students” said Prof. Sandeep Sancheti, President, AIU (Association of Indian Universities) during the valedictory ceremony of the AIU North Zone Vice-Chancellors Meet 2018. While addressing the gathering of Vice-Chancellors from 65 Universities, Prof. Sancheti said, “The aspirations and needs of foreign students are different from Indian students and hence require special focus such as special residential facilities for foreign students, different examination system, personalized counseling and others”.
The meet resolved some of the most relevant aspects related to the higher education in India and highlighted the critical role of Research for universities for promotion of excellence in higher education. While emphasizing the agenda of amount spend on research, Prof. Sancheti said, “Universities need to increase their funding for research and ideally it should be 3-5% of total university annual budget which at present is just 0.7%. In addition every university department needs to have 1-2 dedicated research scholars as faculty members who could just concentrate on research projects, he added
Prof Furqan Qamar, General Secretary, AIU said, “It is only quality research in different fields that the Indian Universities can bag top global rankings and hence it is important to focus of research that can have global impact”.
Konchok Wangdu, Vice Chancellor, Buddhist institute of Studies, Leh said, “Indian Universities need to adopt some of the specializations from the ancient Indian education system such as religious studies, yoga, medieval science, Ayurveda and others which are of high interest among the foreign students.
“In order to increase the adaptability of Indian Ecosystem special Capsule Programs should be designed for the International students where they can check the equivalence of the course curriculum according to the needs in their respective countries. The learning outcomes of every academic program should be based upon international or global standards.” said Dr. R.S Bawa, Vice Chancellor, Chandigarh University.