Resilience, adaptability need of the hour for high-quality education: UGC Chairman

Hyderabad: University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman Prof M Jagadesh Kumar stressed the need for resilience and adaptability to understand and look at the comprehensive picture of the need for providing high-quality education for our young population in the country.

He addressed as the chief guest after inaugurating a two-day conference on ‘Empowering the Education Ecosystem’, with the theme ‘Resilience and Adaptability: Navigating Challenges in Education’, hosted by FICCI, in collaboration with the government of Telangana and TGCHE on Friday.

He said, “We want to have a future that is sustainable, secure, peaceful and healthy, we are all on the same page on this, but on the other side of the picture we also have issues related to the challenges all of us are facing, for example the growing population and the increasing demands for clean energy, clean water, food, access to the health facility, access to good education, challenges of multi-dimensional poverty, the economic systems becoming unstable, climate change, the fight to control in the rise of global temperature.

This can be addressed only when we train our young challengers, to be problem solvers and solution providers so that we find appropriate solutions and realise the dream that we set for ourselves, a sustainable future.”

Stating that reforms in the education system is a prerequisite to do it, he said, "We are fortunate that today we have the vision document called NEP-2020, which lays a road map for us on how we can achieve the dream that we set for ourselves. The fundamental objectives of NEP-2020 are very clear – firstly, to provide learning outcome-based education to students.

Secondly, to provide personalised education to students and third is to provide education at a mass scale considering the number of students that the country has.”

Prof Kumar said that the three requirements may appear to be contradictory, but there are solutions to realise that. When you provide high-quality education on a mass scale it is bound to enhance societal competency levels that will enhance productivity levels, which will enhance the strength of the economic system, which, in turn, will help us to invest more funds into education to reach out to a larger number of people, he pointed out.