XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur organised an Interactive Session with Prof. Anil D Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The topic was ‘The Future of Higher Education in India-Management Education in India’.
The session was attended by Fr. E. Abraham S.J., Director, Dr. Ashis K Pani, Dean (Academics) and other faculty members and students of XLRI.
Addressing the session, Prof. Anil D Sahasrabudhe said, “Education should be the manifestation of excellence and an academic curriculum alone is not enough. There should be enough co-curricular activity in academic institutes to provide holistic development of students. Education should be output-based and not input-based. A good infrastructure, laboratories, libraries are part of the input. However, an output-based education is where focus is on what a student can achieve after undergoing the course, recruitment of a distinguished set of faculty members and a well-defined vision and values to shape the institute’s curriculum. Students should have a social outlook and be sensitised to the prevailing problems and demands of society. Life skills, such as team work and time management are important traits.”
Ethical values
Highlighting his ideas about future managers and management education in India, Prof. Sahasrabudhe said, “Managers should look beyond business and profit. They should be imbued with moral and ethical values. Hence an ethics course should be a compulsory component of the curriculum. It is one thing to know ethics and another to practise it. Therefore institutes must take special care to appoint the right faculty to deliver these courses, so that students can look up to them and hold them as mentors.”
He further added, “Managers cannot be followers, but they have to be leaders. They must assert themselves in giving back to the society. Being innovative and thinking out-of-the-box is the key thing. We need management graduates to be a blend of managers, leaders and entrepreneurs.”
He stressed on opportunities prevailing in India’s unorganised sector. Students must find ways to create job opportunities in small and medium-scale industries and thus tap unused resources. A breakthrough in the future is possible if more management graduates turn to the rural sector and create job opportunities for society. Sectors such as dairy, poultry, agriculture, horticulture should also be seen as significant entrepreneurial ventures.”
Achieving excellence
He highlighted AICTE’s initiative called Marg Darshan, or Mentorship, wherein faculty from institutes struggling to achieve standards of excellence are invited to the top-notch institutes to observe their teaching processes and methodologies, so that they can implement similar policies back in their institutes. This practice of competition and collaboration can help in expanding the quality of education beyond the 100 best B-schools.
He also talked about the initiatives undertaken by the MHRD to accelerate the future of education in India. Initiatives like smart India Hackathon to encourage innovation, National Academic Depository for online availability of all academic certificates and degrees, Study in India to attract foreign students to the country are all steps taken towards reforming and improving the education system of the country.
Tinkering labs
Speaking about quality of teachers, Prof. Sahasrabudhe highlighted the 8-module teacher training programme initiated by MHRD. The initiative is undertaken to increase the number of good teachers across the board.
Responding to the queries of XLRI students regarding the IIM Act, Prof. Sahasrabudhe said that all the PGDM courses are on equal footing with the MBA course provided by the IIMs. On encouraging innovative thinking at the school level, the AICTE Chairman talked about the new education policy suggested by the Kasturi Rangan Committee. He said “Out-of-the-box thinking should be encouraged in students even at the school level and not only in higher education.”
He mentioned that ‘tinkering labs’ were being set up in schools to promote innovation and free thinking in students.