Vice chancellor of University of Mumbai Vijay Khole feels education should be viewed as a business proposition. Fresh from a tour of several renowned universities in UK, Khole said, “Universities and institutions in the UK are over centuries old with a big history, but all have changed with time. There, education is a business proposition and commercialisation is not a taboo like in India.”
It may be recalled that Khole had last year proposed the university get itself listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and later proposed that state universities be allowed to generate funds by investing in bluechip companies.
Similarly, said Khole, post graduate programmes in UK are being converted from two years to an intensive one-year programme to aid students. “There’s no compromise on content and these PG courses are being accepted all over the world and students get high-paying jobs. So why not have a similar system here?” he questioned.
Khole was part of a delegation — comprising several college principals and led by Mumbai sheriff Indu Shahani — that visited UK’s leading universities and institutions — Oxford, Cambridge, City and Westminster, London School of Economics (LSE), Kings College and Imperial College — to learn the best practices being followed there.
“We visited universities, each with at least 400 years behind it. They have established their own companies and have listings on the London Stock Exchange. Nearly 60 per cent of the revenue generated is put back into the university,” he said.
Khole observed that fees charged by some institutes from foreign students were 10 times that charged from local students. Saying that UK institutes had almost 50% foreign faculty, he said that “if we’re talking of raising our standards to international levels, we must consider having international faculty”.
Khole said a report, based on these observations, will be presented to the chief minister, chancellor and higher and technical education minister. Khole said it was the first time that affiliated colleges have had such an exposure to the best practices.
“An important aspect we saw is the utmost importance given to research activities by every teacher and continuation largely depends on that. In contrast, very little’s being done in India. We must introspect on that,” said Ruia College principal Suhas Pednekar. He said teaching back home was about spoon-feeding, where education was exam-oriented where students are evaluated on the basis of one or two exams, and “that must change”.
Another significant issue noted by the delegation is that universities like the Cambridge have customised courses as per industry requirements.
