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How MIET Developed A Blooming Infrastructure With Mr. Puneet Agarwal
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Mr. Puneet Agarwal
- Vice Chairman and CEO of MIET Group of Institutions
- Former General Manager with LNJ Bhilwara Group RSWM Ltd.
- Rich experience in functions: Business Strategy, Operations Management, Corporate Finance, and Project Management
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‘To grow as an educational institution, we must re-invest in our own university’s infrastructure and growth.’

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As the population of our country rises, so do the needs of the population, and one of the basic human needs/rights is that of education. To meet this need in our country, academicians have started thousands of schools and colleges. Thus, we seem to be doing great quantity-wise.

Nevertheless, the persistently low Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) is something we cannot ignore. Many times, students feel that the universities are not delivering what they promised, and they often find that the university’s growth is stagnant.

As a result, the growth of the student is also shunted.

However, we came across the MIET Institutions, which have worked on developing themselves in all sectors possible. Thus, to understand how we can provide quality education to the students, we spoke to the very accomplished Mr. Puneet Agarwal, who is the Vice-Chairman of MIET Group of Institutions.

Mr. Agarwal suggested several techniques to grow an institution in terms of infrastructure, faculty, and quality of education.
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What are the ways in which a well-developed infrastructure will benefit the students? What level of infrastructural development do the MIET Institutions offer?
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With developments in the education sector, there has been a rising demand for a holistic infrastructure in institutions. Such infrastructures used to exist back in the previous centuries in universities like Nalanda University. No matter how ancient, these colleges were fully developed in all the sectors; they had residential complexes, library complex, etc.
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Astonishingly, their libraries were so well developed, that students would flock from different parts of the nation and they would spend years gaining knowledge through the libraries and other holistic infrastructure of the universities.

Thus, the students wish to be part of an institution that has a holistic infrastructure, one that supports and encourages sports, curricular, and co-curricular activities.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a rising demand to develop digital infrastructure. We at MIET Institutions were able to accomplish this by shifting to digital learning very efficiently.

At the initial stage of the outbreak itself, we trained our faculty to operate on digital platforms. Therefore, before the lockdown was imposed, our faculty was well versed with various digital platforms, which we could use during the lockdown. Thanks to our well-trained faculty, we were able to complete our course syllabus and even revise it. As of now, our students are prepared in case the university decides to conduct examinations.

Moreover, we were able to make positive changes in our syllabus and we could also complete the renovations and constructions which were ongoing. Thus, we can confidently say that we are ready to receive students back on the campus post lockdown with better infrastructure.
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Can you list some of the technological advancements that have been made in the teaching pedagogies of MIET Institutions?
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Recently, to tackle the lockdown, every faculty member was asked to record their lectures. This way, the students would be able to access the lectures offline.

We also used various online assessment tools to assess and evaluate the learning of students.

Further, we made extensive use of material from websites that provide free courses like Coursera, Udemy, etc. The students learned many new skills and earned various certificates from such courses provided by reputed companies, like Google.

Even our final year students have upgraded their resumes with these courses and are now ready to step out in the corporate world.
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In your opinion, what is the role of faculty development programs? How do MIET Institutions deliver such programs for their faculty, and what are the positive changes attributed to it?
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Developing faculty is very crucial if we wish to help and nurture students. This is because the teachers and professors are the ones that understand each and every student inside-out. Thus, for effective communication of ideas and curricular plans, our faculties must be well developed.

We are following the ‘I’ model. In this, the faculty at the base level is required to know domain-specific skills, and they must constantly upskill themselves in their domains. As they move up the rank, they can learn more generalized skills.

To aid them, we provide them plenty of choices and material of their domain. This is beneficial to the students as well because the faculty will be able to pass on valuable knowledge about the specific field in which they have acquired skills.

Moreover, the faculty is also trained in terms of project management and technical skills. All this knowledge opens up great opportunities for the faculty, as they are capable of providing training in the corporate sector while working for us.

It also helps them gain recognition in other educational institutes, which further aids their growth. Hence, our faculty development programs benefit both the students as well as the faculty.
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What is the importance and value of Accreditation? What steps did you take to achieve such esteemed accreditations for the MIET Institutions?
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Accreditations are like seals of quality, they ensure the proper working and management of an institution. These bodies make sure that the institution follows the minimum criteria and the laid guidelines to provide quality education. Hence, it is crucial to get accredited by standard bodies.

Besides, accreditations provide a great marketing advantage, as accredited institutions are preferred over other institutions by parents and students.

MIET was first accredited in 2007. Back then, we had accredited 3 branches and 6 programs.

Recently, we applied for the NAAC accreditation, plus, 4 branches have been accredited according to the new guidelines of the NBA, while 3 are still in process. Therefore, in the next 2 years, 75-80% of the streams will be accredited in MIET.
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How can an Institution expand as a financial enterprise? What are the secrets to the success of MIET University?
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‘To grow as an educational institution, we must re-invest in our own university’s infrastructure and growth.’

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For the past 2 decades, we have used the excess revenue earned in bettering our infrastructure. This is what makes our infrastructure stand out from other institutions.

Thus, we must constantly invest in upgrading our institutions.

As per the recent demands of the nation, we are creating an ecosystem for Incubation, Innovation, Research and Development, and Industrial Consultation.

To grow in the R&D sector, we are upgrading all the 136 labs on our campus. By doing so, we wish to equip ourselves with cutting-edge technology so that our faculty, scientists, and students can experiment and create papers and patents.

To encourage Incubation and Innovation, we plan to invest the surplus revenue in the start-ups of students and faculty, and we will provide them with the initial investment.

Further, Meerut is the largest exporter of sports goods, sugar, paper, and agricultural produce. Thus, we are providing industrial consultation to several local industries through our expertise.
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What are some issues that your Institutions are facing, which you think can be solved with the aid of start-ups or any other external organizations?
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I believe that every organization has its own set of strengths and weaknesses.

The only challenge right now for us is to meet the demand of the nation, especially in terms of R&D development.

Other than that, we need more institutions that generate employment. Organizations also need to come up with local products, to replace imported ones. Thus, we wish to inculcate the skillsets in our students and faculty that will facilitate this.

The issue is that our faculty and students come with a rigid mindset and attitude, which needs to change.

Moreover, the COVID-19 situation has made parents paranoid about long-distance education. This is a challenge to not only education institutions, but also corporate institutions. Hence, counseling of parents needs to be done.

Owing to the situation, we also need to figure out the means to reach out to stakeholders through digital communication.

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July 16, 2020
Transforming Youth Into Leaders With Prof. Debashis Chatterjee
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Prof. Debashis Chatterjee
- Director, IIM, Kozhikode
- Has taught leadership classes at Harvard University and at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM),Calcutta, Lucknow and Kozhikode for nearly two decades.
- Has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship twice for Pre-Doctoral and Post-Doctoral work at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
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“The current time is an appointment with your own self, make the most of it.”

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Entrepreneurship is the need of the hour. The economy is down, and now is the time to unleash the potential within. This is the period to transform our students into leaders, and ourselves into well-functioning members of the society.

Prof. Debashis Chatterjee, who is the Director of IIM, Kozhikode; beautifully explained the Art of Leadership and how he has helped the students become the best versions of themselves in such tough times.

Prof. Chatterjee also gave various insights on how one can utilize this time to learn more about themselves through various inspiring stories in this session.
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You are such a great leader, who is really passionate about his work. How would you describe your leadership style?
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Not so much a greater leader but an avid learner. To achieve and practice leadership, one must utilize different tools and perspectives to tackle different challenges.

As an artist uses different brushes to create his piece of art, I, similarly use different approaches through which I can demonstrate a different way of looking at the problem.

I think leaders don’t do more, they see more and this is why they are able to solve problems that others cannot.

Hence, leadership is about perspective as well as execution, because if you simply wish to execute, you might as well be a mechanic.

Leadership is about mobilizing energy of a large number of people.
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How do you coach the students in IIM to become better leaders?
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A lot of people come into workplaces with a certain image of themselves, which is very detrimental for their growth. They come with a chip on their shoulder as a Manager, but because they are working for the first time, they do not have access to the tools of the organization to influence people.

Hence, your ability to influence people will depend a lot on your personal qualities.

Through the IIM campus, the students learn that aspiration is more valuable than resources.

“Knowledge is power, but having an attitude is more powerful.”

They learn that a synergistic way of doing things is way better than a lonely wolf on the prowl.

Not everyone is designated a leader, but, you don’t need to be born a leader. You are born with certain qualities pertaining to this art.

These are what we amplify in the IIM campus. These dormant qualities are amplified by the peer groups, the teachers, etc.
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Leaders have a deep reservoir of energy. If one can acquire this depth, it will take you very far ahead in life. The superficial knowledge of a book and scoring good marks is not enough to make someone a leader.

What makes someone a leader is to be able to unleash this energy to inspire and move people. The ability to inculcate such qualities is the role of a business coach.

We call ourselves management schools and not business schools because a much broader spectrum of knowledge is distributed here. With this knowledge, our students run multidisciplinary businesses; hence you can say that our students not only have roots in the depths but also wings with which they can fly.
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The students are in a state of panic because they are unable to study well, especially in courses like MBA where a lot of case and practical study takes place. Moreover, professors are also going through a tough time.

So, how are you nurturing both these parts of the institution?
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This year has produced a great magnitude of uncertainty.

There are 2 parts to the equation of availability.

One of them is, ‘How much more can I get?’ Here, people look at the number of jobs in the market, the net worth of companies, etc.

The second part of the equation is about ‘How happy can I be with what I have?’ Right now, we do not have access to friends, jobs, or network.

Due to this, the momentum has changed and the second part of the equation has become much more important.

I may not be able to go out in the world and expand, but I can go deeper within my space. I can learn and reflect more about a subject, and acquire its skills.

Not being able to go out, go to the movies, go shopping; gives you the time and opportunity to look within yourself and figure out who you really are.
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“The current time is an appointment with your own self, make the most of it.”

When I used to teach at Harvard, one day while I was going for a lecture, I met a student at the bus stop, waiting for the same bus as me. Within 15s of waiting time, he checked his watch 10 times!

Upon reaching class, I asked him, why he was checking his watch so frequently? ; to which he replied that he was bored with himself.

Can you imagine being so bored with your own company just for 15 seconds?

At such a point, you have to ask yourself what kind of person have you become?

Now is the time for the young generation to unlearn the wrong things.

Students think that when a business becomes successful, it will stay at the top. They don’t realize that every business faces its ups and downs. This is something that they need to re-learn.

Smart faculty members are using this opportunity to finish the books that they wanted to publish. To convert non-authors into authors, I have forced my faculty to be a part of four- book series that I wish to publish.

I explained to them, that it is not that difficult. They can start with writing one sentence, then a page, and then eventually hundreds of pages. They simply need to start.

This is the time for the faculty to engage themselves in the creation of knowledge and not just dissemination of knowledge.

From the student’s perspective, this is the best time to figure out what is their learning style.

Some students learn by reading, some by listening and some by seeing. Thus, if a student realizes that he/she will be able to learn the best by listening, they should watch as many YouTube videos as they like.

Thus, students and faculty should be able to stagger their learning curve in a way that they haven’t been able to do before. If someone used to be a passive learner in classrooms, this is the perfect chance to actively learn.
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If you don’t make good use of this time to amp up your learning curve, you will feel lost when the world resumes.

The tiger knows how to run fast, therefore it is equally important for the deer to know how to run fast in order to survive. When the world resumes, time will gobble you up if you do not know how to run fast.

I partake in physical exercise every day for 40 minutes and encourage all the students and faculty to do the same. Physical exercise is very crucial in this lockdown period because the body and the mind are integrated together, and to keep the mind healthy, the body needs to be healthy.

Hence, I would encourage everyone to build an exercise regime that they can follow throughout life.
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In this time of crisis, when the economy is down, what according to you are the actions leaders and corporates should take in order to tackle this problem without overshadowing their employees?
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First and foremost, the economy is not going to open up at the same level as where it was before.

There are two aspects to working in such an economy.

One aspect is your own capability. The second and not so well known aspect is your ability to cope. The second aspect is very crucial for everyone, from business leaders to students.

How can we cope with dwindling expectations, and how can we cope with decreasing customer interests are two questions that need to be answered.

The only salvation from. the market that is dead is to re-invent yourself and your organization.

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I still remember the story of Konosuke Matsushita of Panasonic company. Due to the crisis of the economy in Japan, his company was down in the dumps.

He had two options. One was to sell the company, and the other was to pay his employees half the salary and ask them to turn it around within 6 months. He offered them the ownership of the company if they could do so because he was going to sell it anyway.

For 6 months, the employees were so energetic that they took to the streets of Osaka and Tokyo, and completely transformed the company. As promised, Matsushita gave away the company to them.

When a journalist asked him why he did so, he replied that he simply held out an umbrella when it was raining.

I think we learn from the people who have fought through such troubled times.

When I joined as the Director of IIM,Kozhikode, we were facing a crisis, but soon, we bounced back, because the team became more innovative in such a situation..

The educational sector will move more towards the Edu-Technological sector. Hence, there will be sunrises and sunsets, one has to look for new possibilities.

A lot of people fail to see when an opportunity arises. People usually ask me, why should we see the big picture? I tell them that it is because the big picture lies in the small pictures.

If someone asks me, what is a cup of tea?

I tell them, that you are drinking photons. The photons that fall on the tea leaves, which we dry the leaves till become brown, to consume them. We don’t consume them dry, we put them in water and boil them.

If this isn’t the desired taste, we add white milk from a good grazing cow on a green field. To better the taste, we add crystallized sap from the sugarcane grown on earth. All these elements of life are compiled into one cup of tea. This is the big picture of a cup of tea – air, water, fire, earth coming together over a cup of tea.

If you can understand the combination of the needs of people from various states, your business is going to run on a national scale.

Hence, the technology that has been established will help students reach new customer bases. This is an opportunity to access and reach out to people because everyone is bound at home.

We need to have that big picture in mind because there is still hope.
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How are the student placements going to be affected by the pandemic, and how you have planned to endure it?
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We should take this positively. I know there have been job losses, but they will come back too.

The jobs might have disappeared, but the customer hasn’t. You can still serve the customer with your talent and your capabilities.
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The human being is a synthesis of many capacities. We have rationality, will power, emotional capability and ingenuity. Hence, we must use our god gifted talents to do things in a way never been done before.

When a student applies for a company, I tell them to speak to the alumni. This is because the alumni can give the students the appropriate feedback, about what are the opportunities in this sector, where else can the student apply, etc.

Hence, if you apply for more posts, and discuss it with knowledgeable people, the outcome is ought to be better as compared to when you silently apply to a few places and wait; because in that case, you may get demoralized.

When you share your agony with people, the agony seems less. So, we should involve a larger community of stakeholders in whatever we do. That is the best way to keep your sanity.

If a company has taken back its job offer as of now, the students can create their own job offer. Even if the institution could not place them, the students can employ themselves by using their tools.

Let us take the story of a product leader, who just came up with a new product.
He/she is not a part of the multinational companies and needs to take the product to the market. He/she does not have the organizational tools and only has social skills.

Two factors can inhibit his/her growth.

One of them is the image of self that we create about the work we have to do, and the work we are supposed to do. This is because at times one may have to do certain things they may not have done before by ways they may have not used before. At such times, this image comes crumbling down.

The second inhibitor is ego. I have not seen anyone put their ego to the side just to work in someone else’s way. A lot of us have been trained to think in a particular way, for example; engineers approach a problem in a cause-effect manner, but, the world is not linear.

Hence, such linear and uni-dimensional ways may not work.

People may have lost their job in the current situation, but they haven’t lost their aspirations and ability to re-engage in other jobs.

Everyone should invest about 4 years learning a skill in depth. You must be the absolute best in what you do.

We can literally get better at anything we wish to.

Fundamental to your growth is the passion for the subject you wish to master and the ability to find a market place for that passion and competence.

The market place you can outsource, but you have to insource the passion.

If anyone wishes to make a mark in such a situation, they need to combine their passion and technology to access the marketplace. If you can master these two, you can fight and resurrect yourself in a way you never would have imagined.
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Do you think now is a good time to promote and teach entrepreneurship to students?
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Entrepreneurship is a way of looking at things. I don’t think it can be given to someone, but it can be nurtured.

At IIM, Kozhikode, we have an incubation centre called Live, where we take up startups from Kerala and other such states. We only come to know whether an idea is good or not when it is presented to us. We should hone the idea at the nascent stage. The idea may not be a fully baked one, but to help the students bake it is our job as institutions.
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Ideas don’t simply run businesses, execution does.

Out of 100 efforts, only one might succeed, but the mechanics behind that 1 successful idea will keep the others going. Thus, the entrepreneurs that succeed will create an aspirational space, and those that do not succeed will learn. This learning process is very important.

A failed business will give you important feedback, and if you get defeated by this failure, you will succeed by learning. If you ask any successful entrepreneur, they will tell you that they have faced failure numerous times.

I would like to conclude with the story of the Gold Rush which took place in California. At one particular place, a lot of gold was found and everyone from all chapters of life, young and old; men and women rushed to get that gold.

There was one young man, who was making iron shovels at the roadside. When asked why he was doing so, he replied that the people who wish to get gold will have to dig it, and for that, they will require my shovel. These people will buy my shovels at the price of gold.

It was an extremely motivating session with Prof. Debashis Chatterjee. The words he used truly moved me. His ideas, his approach, his way of looking at things is inspiring and every student and faculty should learn to look with the perspective of a leader by following his valuable suggestions.

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July 14, 2020
How Private Varsities Can Deliver Quality Education By Dr. Suresh Kumar
Privatization of education had been done years ago, and private universities have been into existence ever since. However, there is still a stigma attached to the quality of education delivered by private varsities.

Be it private or government, striving for growth and delivering top-class education is the primary goal of most universities. As we know, several steps can be taken to do the same, like implementing a better curriculum, developing faculty, achieving accreditations, etc.

To understand the various these processes, we had a very Informative conversation with Dr. Suresh Kumar, who is the Director at Tula’s Institute. He explained in great detail about the processes of accreditation, faculty development, and others that will help private universities grow.

Project-Based Learning

Our first question to Dr. Kumar was about project-based learning. We asked him about his view on an industry-oriented curriculum and project-based learning. We also asked him how he managed to implement these in his college.

Dr. Suresh Kumar informed us that about 60% of engineering graduates in India are not employable. This is because the industry does not find them equipped with the necessary skills; mainly technical skills and knowledge. Hence, it is very important to design and implement industry-oriented curriculums and project-based learning in technical institutions to enhance employability.

Dr. Kumar added that project-based learning allows students to develop knowledge and skills through project work in which they are supposed to solve real-life problems. He explained that in IITs, most of the faculty members are engaged in consultancy projects where they provide technical solutions to the industry. Thus, they also encourage and get students involved in such projects, and through these, the students get exposure to societal and industrial problems.

However, Suresh told us that a lot of private institutes face the challenge of delivering an industry-oriented curriculum. This is not the case with Tula’s Institute, as it has been trying its best to bridge the industry-academia gap since its inception.

Dr. Kumar explained how they have been collaborating with the industry and other premier institutions for skill up-gradation of their students and faculty members in niche areas like Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Robotics, Internet of things, Digital Marketing, etc.

They have regular industrial involvement through guest lectures and invited talks which are delivered by industry professionals; through industry visits and various seminars.

He further explained that they invite academicians from premier institutions to mentor their faculty members. Hence, they have implemented project-based learning in each year of the undergraduate engineering program successfully.

He added that students are supposed to intern in the industry at the end of each year otherwise, they can work on projects under the mentorship of faculty members.

Teaching Quality: Top Government Institutions v/s Private Institutions

Our next question to him was about the differences that he may have encountered in terms of teaching quality in the top institutions of India (IIT) and private institutions. We also asked him about the measures that he took to increase his institute’s quality to become the best private institution.

Dr. Suresh Kumar explained that the comparison of IITs with private institutions is unjust because IITs get huge grants from the government whereas private institutions are self-financed. The amount of money spent per student in terms of infrastructure, human resources, IT tools, etc. is higher in IITs and thus, they can deliver better quality education.

The selection norms for students as well as faculty are strict. This way, they can create the best teacher-student combination that enhances their educational output. Suresh told us that many private institutions struggle to find people with even a doctorate qualification to employ as faculty members.

He further explained that in the IIT courses, heavy emphasis is laid on research and students are being taught in research-rich environments. He added that faculty members integrate the research contributions that they have made in the scientific fields with course material. Through this, students are exposed to the applications of theoretical concepts which will help them solve real-life problems.

Dr. Kumar told us that in most private institutions, teaching is the primary focus whereas research is the secondary focus. This is because the faculty members themselves have no contributions to scientific fields. Thus, they simply reproduce the content written in the books in classrooms.

Dr. Suresh Kumar then told us about the initiatives that they have taken in Tula’s Institute to enhance the quality of education.

He told us that they have implemented tools to deliver outcome-based education in all programs of engineering, management, and agriculture. Moreover, they encourage their faculty members to do MOOC courses available on SWAYAM/NPTEL in their respective domains. As a result. most of their faculty members have qualified SWAYAM/NPTEL courses with good grades.

Dr. Kumar added that they also encourage students to do the same and the faculty guides and suggests the students help them take up suitable courses available on SWAYAM.

He informed us that the SWAYAM/NPTEL courses are developed by eminent faculty members from premier institutions and are of great value to both; the students and the faculty.

Another initiative that Suresh explained was the standardization of textbooks of various subjects. The textbooks that match the standard of premier institutions are used for teaching the students.

Dr. Kumar told us that COVID 19 had compelled them to innovate and adopt e-learning pedagogies. During the lockdown period, the faculty members at Tula’s developed more than 4000 videos on course contents for all subjects. He explained that the students can now access these videos at their own comfort.

He addressed that in the future, blended learning will become a norm and educational institutes will have to gear up for that. Dr. Kumar also told us that Tula’s will go with blended learning in the future and that they will use a customized mobile app developed by Iaugmentor to conduct the next semester.

Need For Research

We asked Dr. Suresh about the need to encourage students and faculty to pursue research and how it would benefit them in their corporate as well as entrepreneurial pursuits.

To which, he replied that research is very important and that it should be carried out in all educational institutes. Dr. Kumar said that the knowledge generated by research forms the basis of sustainable development because this knowledge can be applied for the welfare of society.

He added that research activities in terms of publications, sponsored projects, patents, etc., are very much sought by accreditation agencies.

Suresh told us that research helps to develop a greater sense of the subject which is beyond classrooms. It aids in the intellectual growth of students as well as faculty members.

He further explained how research helps in achieving higher levels of bloom taxonomy (analyze, evaluate, and create) in the cognitive domain. Through detailed research, students develop critical thinking and various skills like analytical, research, and communication skills that are sought by employers.

At Tula’s, they have created an environment conducive to research. Dr. Kumar said that they encourage students to publish research papers and file patents through their project work by providing financial support.

He explained that they organize an IEEE conference at their campus each year for the students and faculty members. They also have a business incubator at their campus which is registered with MSME. They have taken an additional step and have collaborated with Atal Incubation Centre –EMPI to innovate technologies in the domain of renewable energy, IoT, smart energy.

The Process Of Accreditation

We asked Dr. Kumar about the steps involved in the accreditation of universities from bodies like NAAC and NBA and how these accreditations make private universities better in terms of quality of education.

Dr. Suresh Kumar explained that NAAC accredits general colleges and universities as a whole while NBA accredits programs of engineering (like computer science, mechanical, electrical, etc.), management, pharmacy, architecture, hospitality, and tourism. NAAC adopts both quantitative and qualitative assessments for accreditation whereas NBA accreditation is based on quantitative assessment.

He then gave us a list of seven criteria which represent the core functions and activities of Higher Education Institutions based on which NBA accredits them. These are:
1. Curricular aspects
2. Teaching-Learning and evaluation
3. Research, Innovations, and Extension
4. Infrastructure and Learning Resources
5. Student Support and Progression
6. Governance, Leadership, and Management
7. Institutional Values and Best Practices
Further, Dr. Kumar explained that a total of 1000 marks are allocated to the seven criteria and under each criterion, Key Indicators are identified which are further described by Metrics (Quantitative and qualitative).

He added that these Key Indicators vary from 32 to 34 for affiliated colleges and autonomous institutes/universities respectively as set by NAAC. Metrics in numbers for affiliated colleges are set as 96 whereas for universities and autonomous colleges these are set as 115 and 107.

Next, Dr. Kumar explained the steps involved in NAAC accreditation. They take place as follows:
1. Registration by HEI
2. Submission of Institutional Information for Quality Assessment (IIQA)
3. Self-Study Report submission (within 45 days of acceptance of IIQA)
4. Data validation and verification
5. Student satisfaction survey
6. Peer team visit
7. Declaration of results
He informed us that for further details about the process of accreditation, one can refer to the NAAC manual for self-study report on the NAAC website.

He told us that NBA accredits programs on the basis of quantitative evaluation of ten criteria. Out of these ten criteria seven belong to program and three are institutional. These criteria as described by Dr. Kumar are:

Program Level Criteria
1. Vision, Mission, and Program Educational Objectives Program
2. Curriculum and Teaching-Learning Processes
3. Course Outcomes and Program Outcomes
4. Students’ Performance
5. Faculty Information and Contributions
6. Facilities and Technical Support
7. Continuous Improvement
Institution Level criteria
1. First Year Academics
2. Student Support Systems
3. Governance, Institutional Support, and Financial Resources
Further, he was kind enough to explain the steps involved in NBA accreditation, which are as follows:
1. Registration on NBA website
2. Submission of pre-qualifiers
3. Submission of SAR (Self-assessment report)
4. Accreditation visit
5. Award of accreditation (for six years, for three years, no accreditation of the program)
Dr. Suresh then explained the importance of accreditations. He said that institutions that undergo accreditations are bound to create an eco-system for their own growth by offering skill-based education, delivering quality academics, focusing more on research activities, developing human resources, attaining desired student outcomes in terms of placements, following ethical practices and contributing to society through outreach activities. He concluded by saying that all these contribute to improvement in the quality and output of education.

Faculty Development Programs

Our last question to Dr. Kumar was about faculty development programs, and why the faculty of private as well as government universities need to participate in them?

Suresh told us that faculty development programs are designed and conducted with the intent of the professional development of faculty members. Through these, faculty members can improve their technical knowledge, student assessment skills, managerial skills, behavioral skills, and soft skills.

He explained that Faculty Development Programs or FDPs provide a platform to the faculty for interaction and peer learning. These also help faculty members understand and learn about the latest technological developments.

Dr. Kumar added that many FDPs are designed and conducted on a regular basis by premier institutes like AICTE and MHRD.

Suresh told us how most of us need motivation for self-development. Thus, to motivate faculty members, UGC has given some credits for attending and organizing FDPs under the career advancement scheme (CAS) which is applicable for promotions of the faculty member in educational institutes.

He added that accreditation agencies also give more importance to FDPs that the faculty members have attended and organized.

He spoke about the recent scenario and told us how COVID 19 has posed some challenges to faculty members pertaining to the adoption of e-learning. The use of e-learning tools and web conferencing tools has become the norm during the lockdown period.

For this, he suggested that FDPs be designed with an aim to train faculty members for developing e-content, designing interactive online discussions with students, conducting online examinations, etc.

Dr. Kumar told us that during the lockdown period, many FDPs have been conducted in niche areas like Artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, robotics, automation, IoT, etc. and many faculties have benefitted from these.

Dr. Suresh Kumar believes that the practice of conducting online FDPs will continue in the future even post COVID-19 as it is more productive than face to face FPDs in the sense that it is convenient for speakers and at once, 500-1000 participants can attend from distant places.

Dr. Suresh Kumar was kind enough to guide us about the various steps that universities, private or government can take to grow their institution, develop their faculty and in the end, bridge the gap between academia and the industry.

It was a highly informative session and Dr. Kumar inspires us to work hard to bring a change.

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July 13, 2020
Providing Students With World-Class Incubation With Dr. Hafeez Basha

For years, students have traveled abroad to pursue higher studies. The reason being the infrastructure, course structure, and the faculties in foreign universities are excellent and provide them with all-round knowledge to kick-start their careers and entrepreneurial pursuits.

Thus, student exchange programs have been started and several facilities have been developed to help students pursue foreign education. However, efforts also need to be made to bring world-class quality facilities into our colleges and we need to nurture the creative ideas of students if we wish to build better futures for them and society.

To understand more about this, we spoke to Dr. Hafeez Basha, who is the Director of Ashoka Institutions.

He gave valuable inputs on how we can provide students with foreign-level education and how we can incubate the ideas of students.

Creative Enterprises

We asked Dr. Basha how he inspires students to be creative and what is the secret behind the creative enterprises that have budded from the Ashoka Institute of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad.

To which, Dr. Hafeez Basha replied that young minds have plenty of crazy ideas and that these ideas have the potential to become innovations and enterprises if they are properly harnessed. However, these ideas are being lost because instead of publishing them, the students are keeping these ideas to themselves.

He advised that Students should inculcate the habit of writing (be it a research paper or a patent) at the bachelor’s level itself which will preserve their ideas and help them in their career.

Dr. Basha told us that students get inspired by live examples and not by motivational philosophies. He always shares his own success story to aspiring entrepreneurs so that they consider entrepreneurship as a passion and take it up as a career option.

He usually shares his success story about BRCORP, which he started in his final year of bachelor’s and has now been established in more than eight countries.

Dr. Basha informed us that Ashoka Institute of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad has its own Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC) which is entirely managed by a student committee with very little interference from the faculty members. For this cell, the committee prepares an annual calendar of events and evokes interests in students with various activities on the campus.

He added that a cohort is conducted every semester to bring the entrepreneurial ideas of students to the Incubation Center where these are nurtured and taken to the next level. Hafeez told us that the secret behind the creative enterprises is the strong problem statements that the students have identified which they intend to provide business solutions to.

Through the Incubation Cell, the enterprises not only become successful but students can also sustain their startups with consistent efforts, adaptability to current situations, and use of the latest technologies.

Incubating Ideas

We next tried to understand how the student entrepreneurs are nurtured at the Incubation Center of AIET and we asked Dr. Basha about the facilities that they provide the students.

Dr. Basha explained that Ashoka Innovazi Inc. is the Technology Business Incubator of Ashoka Institute of Engineering and Technology and it is registered with The Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India as a section-8 company (non-profit) and is funded by Department of Science & Technology (DST), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.

They also have the Institute Innovation Council (IIC) on their campus which is supported by the MHRD Innovation Cell, Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), Government of India. Apart from this they are locally supported by the Telangana State Innovation Cell (TSIC), Government of Telangana.

Hafeez informed us that world-class infrastructure and facilities are provided to Startups that are incubated at the Ashoka Innovazi Inc. in the form of the maker and co-working space; networking, mentoring, and investor connects opportunities.

Further, Seed Grant is provided to startups with the minimum viable product by Ashok Sailaja Educational Society so that students can build their prototype and pitch it to the investors.

He added that regular visits from the Co-Founders and CEOs of successful enterprises keep the students highly motivated to work rigorously and to bring their products and services in the market. Dr. Basha told us that they also have a Mentor-in-Residence program through which industry leaders groom the startups by working closely with the students in their endeavors.

Difference In Quality Of Education Abroad

We spoke to Dr. Hafeez Basha about his experience of education from across the world and we asked him about the differences that he found in the Indian and the International standard of education. We also asked how he inculcated these into Ashoka Institute.

Hafeez told us that Japan is the most technologically advanced country and has the world’s best Universities. However, he said that India is leading in Information and Communication Technology. The top scores in English tests like IELTS / TOEFL are secured by Indians as compared to other English speaking countries.

He explained that in recent years, there has been significant improvement in the education system of India where the outdated syllabus has been replaced with the latest information. He told us that students are now encouraged to go for higher education abroad with scholarships to gain exposure to the foreign culture, education, science, and technology.

Dr. Basha informed us that some of the major differences in the education standards are that India is keener on theory, conduction of exams, evaluation, and grading whereas Japan focuses more on practicals, assignments, research, and entrepreneurship.

However, he told us that India has already adopted some of the best practices from Japan and other countries to improve the education system for the benefit of students.

Dr. Basha explained how Ashoka Global was started at Ashoka Institutions to cater to the requirements of Foreign Relations and International Programs with foreign universities for higher education, integrated courses, tuning and exchange programs, summer internships, conferences, etc.

In Collaboration With Foreign Professors

Our next question to Dr. Basha was about the workshops conducted in the Ashoka Institutions in association with foreign professors and its benefits to the students.

Dr. Basha explained that the Ashoka Institutions signed an MOU with the University of Massachusetts (UMASS), Amherst, the USA for the program Masters in Science (Electronics and Computer Engineering). Through this, students can study for one year at Hyderabad on their campus while pursuing the final year of the Bachelor’s degree and after graduation travel to Amherst to join the second year and get a Master’s Degree from UMASS.

Further, he explained that the first-year classes will also be taken by foreign faculty through a virtual reality classroom which is first-of-its-kind in India at their campus in Hyderabad.

He told us how Foreign students from Kumamoto University, Japan have visited India for their overseas internship programs and stayed at Ashoka Institutions.

Hafeez listed some of the foreign professors that visited their campus for guest lectures. These include Prof. Shuichi TORII, Assistant Director and Head – Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Kumamoto University, Japan; Prof. Clayton Ferner, University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA; Prof. Erwin Oh, Director – International Relations and Professor in Civil Engineering, Griffith University, Australia; and Prof. Peter Edwards, Chair in Computing Science, University of Aberdeen, UK. Through these lectures, the students received international exposure in advanced engineering topics.

Campus Placements

Our last question to him was about the steps that they have taken to ensure maximum placement of students at AIET.

Dr. Basha explained that placements are very important for students because these provide them job opportunities at the campus itself. Moreover, these act as also a deciding factor when students are seeking to take admissions in engineering colleges.

He told us that they have a strong Career Guidance and Training and Placement Cell to take care of both the technical and soft skills of students in order to make them employable. They also have an in-house career counselor, trainers, and corporate staff to ensuring smooth placements of students.

Hafeez proudly informed us that Ashoka Institutions has achieved a record of 100% placements this year and the students have been placed in companies like TCS, Wipro, Amazon, Genpact, Karvy, etc.

Another placement opportunity he discussed was of Welspun Flooring Ltd., a multinational company that has set up its new plant in Hyderabad near Shamshabad in a 1000 acre campus.

Dr. Basha informed us that they were the only college in the city to host a pool drive for the recruitment of mechanical and electrical engineers as plant operators. He told us that it was a very successful drive with 300+ students getting core jobs with excellent salary packages.
Their students have also appeared for competitive exams and secured good ranks for careers in the government and public sector units.

Our conversation with Dr. Basha brought to light the developments that have been made for world-class education in India, and how we can further enhance them.

His words inspire us to be creative and to provide quality.

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July 13, 2020
Encouraging Faculty Development Programs With Dr. Jayant Sonwalkar
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Dr. Jayant Sonwalkar
- Vice Chancellor, M.P. Bhoj Open University, Bhopal
- Has Trained over 4000 people in SME sector, Over 2000 people in Export Import Area and Over 2000 in Marketing, Strategic Management, Education Management area
- Expert in Teaching at Masters and Ph.D. Level
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“When someone decides to excel on a global level, and not only among their colleagues or in their state, development takes place.”

[title style=”bold-center” text=”introduction”]
The education system comprises three major elements, the infrastructure, the teachers, and the students. Since the teachers are such a vital element, they are one of the key factors that need to be developed to improve the overall education.

We need more academicians and faculty who possess the sincerity and willingness to grow as well as improve in their personal and professional life.

In an insightful discussion with Dr. Jayant Sonwalkar, who is the Vice-Chancellor of M.P. Bhoj Open University, Bhopal, and specializes in guiding faculty members to conduct international-level research, I learned a lot about faculty development programs.

During the conversation, he spoke about the difficulties as well as hurdles faced in faculty development. Mr. Sonwalkar also talked about the future of open and distance education.
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You are well known for transforming the institutions from national to international level. What are the changes the head of the institutes expect to bring in the institute after the transformation?
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Transforming an institution is a big decision. To transform, firstly one has to know what their strengths as well as weaknesses are and what is the environment into which they wish to transform.

Some institutes which are in existence since the last 200-300 years don’t wish to transform themselves while some organizations may decide to do so just after 25 years only.

So, this is a decision that has to be taken by the top authorities. Once they decide to do so, they need to examine factors like;
- What is the current position of the institute?
- Where do they wish to take it in 5-10 years?
- Why are they transforming?
- What are the benefits of the transformation that they will avail of shortly?
For every organization, there are opportunities as well as threats in the environment.

It’s the heads who have to decide whether the University has a scope of transformation and it has enough strength or not. For an impactful transformation, you need to have a strong team that knows where it is heading, and each member of the team should work together for at least 2 to 5 years.

Overall, it’s a long decision and a long process.
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Today our major focus is on updating curriculums to improve education. Do you think we should focus more on faculty development programs?
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It is very important to focus on faculty development. The elements of the education system include building infrastructure, the teachers, and the students. After that comes the supporting environment like computers and libraries.

Out of these three elements, the faculty is the most important one. If you go back to the gurukul system of Indian education, there used to be competitive exams to get into the Ashrams of the Gurus. The Gurus used to have the complete right to accept or reject a student.

A mechanized system was then implemented by the Britishers and over the years, in the pursuit of teaching, we have become mechanized due to this, we forget to revise our syllabuses.

Earlier it used to be done every 5 years, and now, because AICTE has mandated that it should be revised every three years, it is taking place more effectively.

The students must get the latest knowledge and that the latest knowledge has to be delivered by the best faculty. If the faculty themselves are not ready or are not trained enough, the students won’t attend their classes.

This is why we end up hearing from the teachers that the students don’t attend their classes, and they only start coming when the exams are close.

This is not the case in UTDs and IIMs. In these institutions, all the students come to class and the attendance is 85-90% just because they have better faculty. Therefore, if the faculty is good, most of the problems of the education system will be resolved.

We need to pay the utmost attention to faculty development programs. Another suggestion which I also proposed in the National Economic Policies meeting, which was a meeting of about 700 Vice-Chancellors; was that faculty from practical sectors like engineering, management, etc., must be sent back to the industry every five years, for one year. After this, they should come back and teach.

This is very important because if the faculty is not exposed to current technologies and trends then s/he won’t be able to provide relevant information to the students and train them effectively. It’s just like a doctor who practices surgery but cannot operate a patient. If a doctor is more bookish, he will not be able to diagnose the patients correctly.

That is why it is imperative for the faculty to train themselves every five years and to update themselves on their knowledge.
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We see that institutions hesitate to enroll their faculties in such development programs. How can we encourage them to put their faculty forward in these development programs?
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There are multiple reasons for this. If you talk about private institutions, they cannot leave their faculty because the faculty here does everything other than teaching, like keeping records, and all other such tasks. So these institutes don’t wish to lose their manpower for a month or so.

In government institutions, people are lazy, the teachers don’t want to go, or the HOD doesn’t want his teachers to go and he allows only his favorite teachers for such programs. So, there is a lot of politics that goes on.

Another thing which I have observed is that when the female faculty members get settled in their lives and have kids, they restrict themselves from growing and developing further.

They hesitate to do this because if they go and learn new things, they will have to teach new classes. Be it male or female faculty, nobody wants to get out of their comfort zone. They don’t want to learn new subjects.
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We know how important faculty development is. Should we plan some norms and compulsions to get them into action?
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There are certain compulsions already in existence. Once you become a lecturer, and unless you attend two long time faculty development programs, of 21 days, authorized and certified by UGC and AICTE, you cannot get promoted to the position of an associate professor or leader. Similarly, you need to attend two more to be promoted further.

Also, what happens in these programs is that there are groups from different subjects and there is a mix of people. Thus, a very non-specific program is conducted. The faculty development programs should be more specific and workshop based, where more practical work is done.

Like in IIMs, they used to have faculty development programs of three months but now they have reduced the tenure to one month; even in one month, they teach the faculty for 6-8 hours and provide exercise or homework for 4 hours a day.

Unless the faculties themselves get sincere towards these kinds of programs, it is very difficult to develop them. It is always a two-way process, the faculty should be eager to learn and their teachers should be able to train them well.

This eagerness should arise as a result of the competition itself. If my colleague is performing well, I should do even better than them. If this kind of healthy competition gets into the faculty development programs, then it will become an automated process.

The new policies do take care of this. They have reduced the period of the programs and have made it compulsory for the faculties to attend these programs in every 2 to 3 years.
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Certainly changes in the policies have been made but are they enough for the transformation of institutes?
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A transformation has to be well thought out and well designed. It should take place a specific amount of time, say 3,5, or even 10 years and after that time one can become fairly global or even national.

Transformations come with the vice-chancellors. If the Vice-Chancellor is keen to develop his university, then good transformations take place but some Vice-Chancellors come with the mindset that they are there for merely 5 years, what can they do? They will let things remain as they are and complete their tenure of five years.

If people have such a mindset, they cannot bring a change.

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If we look at it, the faculty development program is more than just for developing education and the students. It is for the betterment of the faculty themselves too. So, should we be motivating the faculty to improve themselves?
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Yes, absolutely but unfortunately, there exists a kind of lethargy in many of the Indian faculties. I am very much Swadeshi, but still, I see that the lethargy is the highest in Indian faculty. They think that “My salary will remain the same for the next 8-10 years as an associate professor then Why should I work hard?”

So people don’t put in the extra effort. “If others aren’t doing so, why should I?” is their mentality. A change in this should come from within.

If you see, the number of researchers has gone down in universities because of this. They think that they have a Ph.D., so why do research now?

Thus, UGC made it compulsory to write two papers before the Ph.D. is awarded. Still, some faculty members will write two papers and stop. Research work should be done for personal and professional satisfaction, not just for the sake of doing it.

I met a 50-year-old faculty from the finance department on my trip to the US. Later I came to know about her, that in the 30 years of her career, she has written 45 books, 200 research papers in US Journals, she was the editor of 10 journals, and she was publishing two journals herself!

If we start writing a paper for the US journals, we take from six months to a year to publish them!

When I checked the profile of that institute, I saw that almost all the faculty has 20-30 books in their name and nearly 100 papers.

“When someone decides to excel not only among their colleagues or in their state/country but also globally, only then development takes place.”

The government is trying hard to make universities globally known but the biggest hurdle is lack of research work.
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I agree, that research is one of the hurdles in our path and it is stopping us from becoming global platforms. As per you, what steps should the government and the institutes take to make research a more sought after thing?
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I think people in research are starting to do well now, thanks to the policies and awareness. As per the statistics, for the last two years, the articles from Indian authors in international journals have increased to 40%! All thanks to Government policies!!

Not only should we start writing good articles in international journals, but we should also start publishing international journals, by making a global editorial board.

When UGC made it compulsory to publish two articles every year, even though that policy was no longer in existence, at that time, a lot of Indian publishers mushroomed. Even from a small city or taluka, they published international journals.

We need more than just this. We need to have an international editorial board, an international reviewer board, and then if we publish journals, we will grow very rapidly.

I am very optimistic about my approach, and I think the number will increase very fast and things will improve.

With that being said, a lot still has to be done.

The biggest hurdle in writing research is that there is no hand-holding being done. Senior professors don’t guide their juniors.

One of the toxic things in the Indian psyche is personal jealousy. This is much more in India than in any other country and it is highly visible in their behavior.

The senior professors feel that their junior will excel and move ahead of them if the junior completes his/her Ph.D. and writes in an international journal. Finally, tomorrow the junior will become their competitor.

When you are already an established professor and you have your path of growth, how will anyone cross your path?

They should feel confident about themselves. It is their job to train the younger generation to write better and publish better journals. The openness of the mind should come with the senior faculty members and they should give a lot of time in hand-holding and training their juniors.
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The pandemic is transforming the way we see education. It has opened up ways for virtual classrooms and distance learning in colleges. What is your view of open learning and distance education post COVID era?
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We are currently in the COVID era and are passing through it.

There were times when people were not using online transactions, and due to Modi Ji’s efforts, Paytm overnight became popular. Similarly, in these times, apps like zoom or google classroom have automatically become very popular.

I have been fighting for universities to go online for the last 10 years and that is why when I became the Vice-Chancellor of this open university, I was very happy.

It was now my turn to make my university go online. This is God’s gift and a blessing in disguise.

You must have heard that in the last few days our finance minister announced that 100 universities are to be given sanction to start online programs.

If each university starts 35-40 courses, 4,000 courses are going to be offered very soon and our country will be full of online programs and online courses.

So, my assumption of post-COVID times, which is yet to come, is that post-COVID video conferencing will be a norm. It will not be unusual. Already a lot of universities have started taking Ph.D. vivas on video conferencing.

When I suggested this to one of the Universities in Madhya Pradesh before this situation, the answer I got from the Dean of the faculty there was that “it is illegal” and “please don’t force us to do this, You come to take the viva.” Today, he is telling me that you are most welcome to take your viva online!

Within just 60 days, even our mindset at Bhoj university has changed. We never used to take lectures online on platforms like Youtube, but now, we have taken over 250 classes online.

Technology will get into our lives faster as well as in a more intense manner and we will be able to use it productively. People should use technology for their benefits because it saves a lot of time.

If you were to come to take my interview from Delhi, you would’ve taken at least 2 days to come but now you took it in just a short span of half an hour!

This is going to become a norm and post the COVID scenario, people will appreciate open and distance learning. The gap between regular and distance learning will fade away in India, which the other nations already have bridged.

If you go abroad for a job and you tell them that you have completed your education from a distance university, they won’t raise an eyebrow but here if you go for an interview and if you have done distance learning and if some other candidate has done regular learning, then he is preferred over you, which is not at all correct.

Therefore in the current and the coming times are prosperous for the nurturing of online as well as distance learning.

The conversation with Dr. Sonwalkar was eye-opening. He surely inspires me to keep growing and developing myself and advises all the faculties to do the same.

For More Such Articles, News Update, Events, and Many More Click Here

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July 11, 2020
Nurturing Entrepreneurship With Prof. Sibaram Khara
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Prof. Sibaram Khara
- Vice Chancellor, Sharda University
- Previously, he has served as founder Dean Academics in Galgotias University.
- His research articles are presented at seminars and conferences in many countries, namely, WEAS’02 Athens, IEEE VTC’06 Melbourne, IEEE PWC’07 Prague, IEEE/ACM SAC’10 Switzerland, etc.
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“Education and Entrepreneurship cannot come to a standstill. It must go on.”

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Entrepreneurship is all about innovation and execution. It is about minds that can create brilliant ideas to serve all of mankind. Such brilliant ideas need to be fostered. This is where universities come into the picture.

Students have creative minds and are highly capable of innovating. All they need is the right guidance and freedom to learn.

Thus, as people from academia, it is our role to seed these ideas and assist the students in nurturing them. This can be done by providing them incubation centers, by helping students partner with the industry, and through financial aid like an initial investment.

The freedom to pick the subjects that students like regardless of the course they are pursuing will help students in becoming creative and passionate about learning.

To understand more about this entrepreneurial and choice-based approach, I had a session with the incisive Prof. Sibaram Khara; who is the Vice-Chancellor of Sharda University.

Prof. Khara discussed about the wise approaches that they have adopted to support their students in their entrepreneurial pursuits. He also gave various suggestions on how we can let students chose the subjects they wish to learn through credit systems.
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“To serve the society by being a global University of higher learning in pursuit of academic excellence, innovation and nurturing entrepreneurship.”

This vision of Sharda University is commendable. What are the practices you follow to keep your vision inline especially for innovation and entrepreneurship?
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We always keep the vision in our minds because the people will recognize us for the same. To achieve our vision, we have also laid out certain mission statements.

If we talk in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship, the university has focussed on employing high profile and highly experienced faculty members to nurture young talents.

Secondly, a lot of laboratories and practical work has been embedded in our curriculum, even in content delivery, we implement experimental and project-based learning. Through the laboratory classes, the students will efficiently gain practical exposure and will understand the use-case of the things taught in the classroom.

We have highly specialized project laboratories where students can come up with any innovation, and they will have the facilities and expert guidance to move ahead with their idea.

This is how we came up with the robots for COVID-19, which have been purchased by the district magistrates. Our students have also developed software that gives a tough competition to pre-existing online learning platforms. Overall, there are about 150 entrepreneurs who have emerged with the help of our University.
1. We have a very strong Sharda LaunchPad, as we are the BI (Business Incubator) of MSME and we are tightly working on NISB. It is a state of the art facility. Here, we provide the space to any student, who has an innovative idea and wishes to start their own enterprise. Currently, we have 31 budding entrepreneurs who are running their companies through the Sharda LaunchPad.
2. To build the base of entrepreneurship, the skills of entrepreneurship need to be taught. What is a business, what are the factors involved, what should be the approach; without knowing such things, one cannot become a successful businessman. For this, we have the consultants Mr. Rajneeti Sharma, Mr. Rajesh; who are guiding students in multiple disciplines like business, engineering, and media. We are providing a cutting edge to these students through courses on how to start and take their business forward.
3. Further, we have another Venture Cell as a part of the mission. Through this, the students visit various communities and societies; and figure out the need of the industry and how they can fulfill it.
A few more approaches have been taken up in line with Industry 4.0 as well.
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I would like to understand how you are helping the budding entrepreneurs on your campus in terms of financing and funding?
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We are providing them with some seed funds and the rest of the funds come from outside investors. Most of the funds are provided by Mr. Suman Sarkar.

Usually, our students get investors but if they are unable to get investors, as per regulations, we give them 1 lac Rupees to start their enterprise. Other than this, we even get funds from MSME.

Our industry interface officer, Mr. Rajneeti Sharma, and his team go to the industries and invite them to our campus. We have connections with more than 200 organizations. Through such connections, the students are able to find a lot of avenues to associate with the industry.
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Sharda University is well known for attracting international students, who come from over 85 countries across the globe. With the current pandemic in action, how are you planning to have new admissions for international students? Also, what is the state of such students currently associated with you?
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It is a huge challenge to deal with the students currently on campus. We have almost 2,200 foreign students, who have a separate hostel for accommodation. Other students are also staying around greater Noida due to the availability of good accommodations.

When the lockdown was declared, staying in the hostels and maintaining social distancing was an issue. Hence, we contacted the embassy and arranged special flights, and most of these students have returned home. Only about 347 students, most of whom are Nigerian, could not be sent back.

Moreover, We are constantly communicating with the Nigerian Embassy and are trying to get them back to their home safely. As per the UGC guidelines, we cannot force students to go back, hence we are taking utmost care of them.

We have an office dedicated to international admissions which comprise 20-25 staff members. Earlier, nodal officers used to go abroad to understand and solve the concerns of students, but since that is not possible, we are working online to accomplish that.

The next semester will start before the 15th of August, which is the predicted date for the government’s decision on the allowance of students on the campus. Thus, teaching is going to start on online platforms.

Admissions too will be conducted online, and international students can attend online classes. After the situation eases, they are welcome to the University campus to participate in regular learning.

The process of admission is completely online because the parents and students are unable to visit the campus and check out the laboratories and other infrastructural facilities. Hence, the parents have to believe what is displayed on the website of the university.

To prevent misunderstandings, I have issued an unbiased message on our website informing the parents to be careful in their decisions, because they cannot fully rely on glossy advertisements that have been put up on the website. The parents also must reach out to us and contact the faculty to understand exactly how well the facilities are.
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Sharda University has been awarded the prestigious QS I.GAUGE E-LEAD Certificate for its excellence in online education. How is this certificate going to provide mileage to Sharda University in the upcoming academic year?
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I am not sure how much mileage it will provide us, but it certainly highlights the cultures followed in the university. To achieve this certificate, we had to submit all the records of online classes that were conducted since the 24th of March.

A lot of parents would compare us with other universities who were not conducting online lectures. But, we opted to continue with our lectures even after our last instructional day, which was 24th April. This was to ensure that the students get maximum guidance possible. Our faculty was so engaged with the students that we were just a phone call away.

Hence, we had to put in a lot of hard work to achieve this certificate, but I’m not sure how much mileage this will provide us. Although, it represents Sharda University’s culture and practices.

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After the unprecedented disruption created by COVID-19, the urgency and importance of drafting a robust education policy is more than ever. According to you, what changes should be made in the upcoming Educational Policy?
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“Education and entrepreneurship cannot come to a standstill. It must go on.”

We do acknowledge the fact that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the method of teaching has shifted to online means; but, the question that arises is about the innovations that are required to make it more effective.

The government has been working on the National Education Policy, which should be published soon. It had been reviewed before the COVID crisis, but looking at the impact of the virus, it was discussed and changed. Tomorrow, we will be having a meeting with EPSI, discussing the pros and cons of the policy.

The first change that needs to be considered to continue online education is that the traditional ERP systems will not be useful. The evaluation of marks and conduction of exams also demands new systems. Hence, system readiness is required. Earlier, we used to manually take attendance and upload it. Now, most universities have adopted an automated system for this.

Another vital aspect is content delivery. Virtual classrooms do not permit us to see the faces of every student present. It becomes a challenge to ensure the engagement of the students and effective learning. Therefore, the pedagogy and content delivery systems need to change.

Lesson plans will have to change and interactive sessions, as well as webinars, will have to be introduced in them.

Virtual mode raised the need to see our Evaluation Techniques. We cannot always conduct MCQ tests for the evaluation of knowledge. All the students do not have the necessary software or internet facilities for this either. Moreover, we will have to reconsider how to conduct the evaluation and online learning for the next semester.

As per the policy, 100 top universities will be permitted to conduct online courses. Although, this will be different from Distance Learning. The government will further issue the regulations of these online programs.

In these reforms, they have also spoken about curriculum; and the liberal and choice-based curriculum. In the existing scenario, the only aspect of the choice-based system was to offer the students elective subjects but it has to change.

“My approach is the ‘Cafeteria Approach’. If a lot of courses have common subjects to offer, we should let the students chose what to pursue, just how we let them eat whatever they wish to in a cafeteria.”

With this approach, the students will develop multi-disciplinary knowledge, and this will be useful in solving the problems of a variety of sectors. Even this method should be balanced with a strict curriculum. We just need to increase the credits given to elective students, say maybe from 15/100 to 30/100.

This way, the students will be able to pursue their hobbies by working in an interdisciplinary manner.

Thus, true choice-based options should be given, where the students can choose the credits they wish to acquire, either online, offline, or projects. Also, a proper infrastructure is required for the proper regulation of credits as per choice and subjects.

Another suggestion I would like to give about the National Education Policy is in terms of accountability building. How the government will ensure that every institute stays accountable for the services they provide, is a serious question.

Then comes the quality ensuring and authentication process. Such processes must ensure how authentic education is and how well the bias has been removed. This used to be a major problem in India, but now, we have grown past that and are moving towards quality education.

A foolproof method of accreditation and quality assurance needs to be created. Corruption also needs to be removed from the Industry.

The people will believe in the quality of ground-level universities only if the government ensures such accountability and accreditations. It is easy to do so virtually and on paper, but such assurance needs to come from physical practice.

We have started so many colleges and produced so many engineers, but the employability is only 30%. This is due to the lack of reforms in curriculum, lack of quality ensuring bodies, etc. Biasness has been removed from a majority of colleges in the last 5 years, but we still have a long way to go.

If via policies, the colleges are forced to maintain good quality education, it will benefit the students, who in turn will contribute to the nation.

This session with Prof. Khara vividly explains to us about the steps that Sharda University has taken to battle the crisis and give rise to budding entrepreneurs.

Very intelligently, he explained to us about the Launchpad, the mentorships, and the support Sharda University provides to their budding entrepreneurs.

Mr. Khara also gave his suggestions for the National Education Policy, especially about the Cafeteria approach and accountability systems.

Prof. Sibaram Khara inspires us to work hard and to be accountable for our work.

For More Such Articles, News Update, Events, and Many More Click Here
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July 3, 2020
Why We Should Not Change Our Curriculum Frequently Let’s Know it from Dr. Dheeraj Sanghi
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Dr. Dheeraj Sanghi
- Director at Punjab Engineering College Chandigarh
- Held several important roles in different institutions including: Director of LN Mittal Institute of IT, Jaipur, Dean of External Relations at IIIT Delhi, Dean of Academic Affairs at IIT Kanpur
- Researcher in the area of computer networks and network security
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“If the student knows what is in the curriculum, then he already knows 80% of the subject because the basics don’t change.”

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In recent times, a lot of institutes have worked towards upgrading their curriculums, but there is a serious underlying issue. The problem we overlook is that we do not learn what already exists in our curriculum.

Another problem is the lack of practical projects in our curriculum. Our educational system is very much inclined to theory exams, instead of assignments and projects.

So to learn more about curriculum development, I had a very informative interview with Dr. Dheeraj Sanghi, who is the Director of Punjab Engineering College. He is very well known for his works in curricular development and has worked with renowned institutions like IIT Kanpur, etc.

Let us dive into this knowledge filled interview.
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Every domain has been hit by the pandemic, including the education sector. So how should we design our curriculum to minimize the loss to the students, as we don’t know when this is going to end.
Also, how can we make this situation easier for the faculties so that they can deliver more knowledge to the students?

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My idea about the curriculum has always been that we teach too much. If you look at the engineering curriculum, particularly in tier 3 institutions, the amount of content that they try to teach students is very high. If that is reduced, it will be easier to handle teaching, particularly in emergency situations like the pandemic we are facing.

What happens now is that we have 6 courses every semester. If you had only 4 to 5 courses which is what most top universities have, the teaching load on the faculty will be that much less.

Also, with 6 courses, students spend a lot of time in classrooms and labs, and it becomes difficult for them to carry out projects and assignments. So it becomes a very theoretical and boring education. If the number of courses was less, the faculty can ask students to do more projects, on which they could work from home or hostels.

So I think a reduction in course load is one change that needs to be made.
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We are very much at a loss of practical knowledge, which is something we just cannot ignore. Especially in engineering colleges, practical knowledge is very important. So what is your suggestion about it?
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I am of the view that education in the current state is not very practice-oriented. The level of the projects students do is not good enough. Even those poor quality projects are often plagiarised.

But I want to warn you about one thing. When people talk about practical education, the thought immediately goes to taking help from the industry. Students should work on projects which are relevant to the industry. But I believe that seeking industry help is not always the right thing to do. Let me explain with an example.

When some recruiter from the industry comes to me and tells me your students could not write a code in python, we can’t hire them, what does he mean?

Is he suggesting that I should have Python in our curriculum?

No, that’s a wrong interpretation. And, by the way, if he indeed means that the primary reason for not hiring was lack of knowledge of python, then he doesn’t deserve to be the HR manager and he should be thrown out by the company.

According to me what he is saying is that “I am not hiring your students because I am not convinced that they can learn python in a week. If the students could learn python in a week, my company would have no problem. “

What makes him come to this conclusion?

It is because when he comes for placement, he first asks the student what language they have learned. When he finds out that they have learned C++, he asks them to write sample code in C++. And he realizes that the students have a lack of knowledge even in topics that they are supposed to have learned.

So, the problem is that the student had not learned that was a part of their own syllabus. And therefore, they cannot be sure that the student will learn Python in a week. But when it comes to giving feedback, they will blame the lack of Python.

“I am probably the only one in this country saying this, but I don’t want companies in my senate hall when I am deciding my curriculum.”

I see a clear divergence of inputs from an HR manager and a senior technical person from the industry. HR Manager talks in terms of current technologies and immediate needs.

But a senior technical person appreciates basics. He understands that students who can learn things quickly will be great employees. I would want their inputs but they are also very busy, and thus what we get as industry inputs is often the wrong type of input.

There is too much hype regarding industry readiness, but the real issue is that the students are not ready for anything, not even in the subjects they are taught!

“The gap between the industry and academia is overrated.”

Working on technologies that industry is working with is important, but what is much more important is that students do projects and assignments. Just introducing new technologies in the curriculum, and not having projects or allowing cheating in assignments would help no one.

Till the education level is reached to a point that our students are doing several projects, just changing curriculum or introducing the latest technologies will not help. So, in the curriculum design, I wouldn’t mind if the industry is completely absent.
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Why do you think we should not incorporate in our curriculum what the industry is demanding?
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Technologies change more quickly than the rate of change of curriculum. Let me explain this with an example,

Say, I am teaching C++ in our curriculum and the industry person comes and suggests me to teach Python instead. A significant change in the curriculum takes 1-2 years, including discussion among the faculty, approvals in Board of Studies, Academic Senate, etc.

Once it is approved at all levels, only then I can implement it from the next batch, and then four years later, the student is going to come out with the knowledge of python.

Thus, six years from now the first batch will be able to graduate with Python. By then Python is going to become irrelevant.

So, as I said earlier, the focus should be to teach the current curriculum so well that the student can learn Python in a week whenever needed. That is more important than a change of curriculum to include Python.

The problem with most Indian university students is that 99% of B.Tech Computer Science graduates cannot write even a 200 line code. Programming is the most basic skill for a CS graduate. We must fix that first, then we can talk about industry involvement.

By talking about industry readiness, we have removed accountability in the system. Today, my teacher is completely off the hook for not teaching properly and my students are completely off the hook for not learning anything.

By bringing in Python, you have ensured that teachers will claim that students are not ready because of the curriculum, and students will also blame the university for not teaching them Python, while the reality is that teachers didn’t teach C++ and students didn’t learn C++.

This is not how we can improve education. The only way to improve it is by holding the teachers accountable and telling them that whatever they are teaching is important.

The curriculum being outdated is a problem, but not a serious one. It is a very small problem, as compared to the fact that the student does not know anything about what is in the curriculum.

“If the student knows what is in the curriculum, then he already knows 80% of the subject because the basics don’t change.”

Nowadays, students don’t know either; new stuff or old stuff, but our focus is only on the fact that he doesn’t know new stuff.

By saying all this, I am not suggesting that we should never upgrade the curriculum. We should try to upgrade it regularly, make it more relevant for the time. But we are ignoring 80-90% of the problem and we are looking at the very tiny 0.1% of the problem called industry readiness.
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Another factor you spoke about was that it takes a long time, say 6 years to change the curriculum. Do you think we should work upon how can we reduce its time span?
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We cannot hasten this process in the system of academia as we need to disclose this to students before the admission process. And any changes to the curriculum have to be discussed in the Board of studies, Senate, and the other important bodies.

Thus, any major changes in the curriculum will take at least a year to year and a half, and because it is a four-year degree program, the bare minimum time the students will take to graduate with this knowledge is 5 to 6 years.

We do include some of the latest knowledge in the curriculum through elective subjects, which the third and the fourth year students do have in the current system.

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If we talk about the faculties, many of them are facing problems taking virtual classes. First, it was a task for them to adopt the system of virtual classrooms. Second, it has put a lot of burden on the professors as compared to their initial work.

How can we work upon this, to make it easier for them and to make the learning more effective?
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I would like to suggest that there should be training for every faculty on how to use new technology. Some differences will arise in the pedagogy when teaching online versus face to face, and the faculty must also be trained for that.

There are many things that can be easily implemented.

AICTE says that a class should not consist of more than 60 students. Thus, to adopt this system, the tier 2 and tier 3 institutes that have batches of about 240 students, distribute it as 4 different faculties teaching 60 students each. This gives rise to a complicated process of making sure that they are teaching similar things to all the students.

However, when teaching online, they can teach all the 240 students in the same video lecture. There is no reason to have four different lectures. And if we can reduce the teaching load in this fashion, the faculty would have enough time to learn new skills and pedagogy.

I think that if the faculty is cooperative, there are a lot of things that can be implemented easily.

For example, there are many good courses available on online platforms such as edX, Coursera, etc. If the teacher is teaching a course on thermodynamics, he/she can handpick this content from the 2-3 websites, and then they can tell the students to go through that content.

After this, the teacher can take one hour of doubt clearing sessions. This is a very effective method of online teaching. The load on the faculty will come down because they won’t have to teach as much, the working hours will be reduced and as a consequence, they will be happier!

I think it all comes down to whether they are willing to help the students and whether they are compassionate towards the students.

The fear in many tier 3 institutes is that this online business is going to result in the firing of staff. That’s one reason why they are slow in the adaptation of these methods.
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Exams are a vital part of any learning process. In the current situation what should be done, whether to conduct exams or not? If yes so which is a better mode VIrtual or Offline traditional one?
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As we were planning to end this semester, we had a lot of discussion on exams.

We agreed that all the students are in a state of stress and anxiety. In such a situation, we should be a little bit liberal with them. If we are to conduct exams, we could have a reduced syllabus, a slightly easier exam, and we could be somewhat lenient when it comes to assigning grades.

But, I oppose the idea of giving all of them A grades or being too liberal. A slightly liberal and helping attitude in such a pandemic is ok, but the grades must reflect the learning done by the students to some extent. This is because even 10 years later the student could be showing the mark sheet to someone.

Next, the question arises whether or not it is possible to conduct exams that can be trusted. If we cannot trust the process of the exams, then there is no point in taking the exam. This lack of trust is the reason why I personally am not in favor of taking online exams.

We realized that it is very difficult to trust an online exam. Thus we are only going to trust our evaluation that we did till mid-March and on that basis, we are going to decide whether the students pass or fail.

We also said that this is not a sufficient basis to allot fine-grain grading. Based on the limited evaluation, we cannot determine the exact grades.

Thus, we decided to make the system such that the students either pass or fail. The students that are failing, may argue that they would have passed if they were allowed to give a final exam. For this, we will give them a second chance, by letting them give an exam whenever we can open up the institute.
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If this situation extends for 6 months more, how will you proceed with the curriculum for the next semester and the exams for it?
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It is only because this was an emergency that we did not have all the elements in place. Now, we have thought about a mode of action for the future.

Some companies have some very good software for proctoring online exams. We are planning for an online semester and we will make a deal with these companies and use the software that works the best for us. We will conduct online exams next semester.
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You must be having some students that stay in the interior parts of the country who must be facing connectivity issues, or they might not even be having laptops or such facilities. How can we plan the virtual mode of teaching with them?
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We are calling such students to stay on our campus. We have 3300 students in total. The government requirements of social distancing, etc. will be such that I cannot have all 3300 on my campus, but I can certainly have 300-400 students on my campus.

Teaching will be completely online, but these students can stay on campus and use our PCs and our internet to attend all the classes.

We can do much more than this for the students.

Let’s say that my student is in Delhi, and there is a student from another university who is in Chandigarh. I can tell the universities of that state to keep my student at their campus and I will allow their student at my campus. This way, we can have collaborations with the universities, to handle students of respective areas.

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This session with Dr. Sanghi changed my perspective about our thoughts to change curriculums frequently. He gave several insights on the challenges faced during updating of the curriculum.

Also, his thoughts about how we can combat with current COVID-19 pandemic challenges are very innovative, and I’m sure will help many of you.

For More Such Articles, News Update, Events, and Many More Click Here
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June 29, 2020