Symposium held on mainstreaming of agri higher education in private varsities

Rajendranagar: To address various issues pertaining to quality higher agricultural education, governance and mainstreaming of private education, the ICAR-National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, Hyderabad under the aegis of National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP) organised a "National Symposium" themed 'Mainstreaming of Agricultural Higher Education in Private Universities of India' on Thursday at NAARM Rajendranagar.

During the colloquium, deliberations were made over four major themes that include- equal opportunity in education and employment, quality assurance in agricultural education, enabling an environment for quality education and accreditation in the context of new education policy.

While addressing the symposium as Chief Guest, Dr R C Agrawal, Deputy Director General, ICAR and National Director (NAHEP), New Delhi, said, "It was mandated to fulfill human demand of agricultural graduates by 2030 for which there should be sharing of resources between public-private through MoUs and ICAR will play a role of facilitator to bridge the gap." He also urged teachers to work to ensure that the horizon of thinking, learning and knowledge-base should be enhanced.

"There are many challenges in increasing the number of students, providing accommodation and resources. Hope that we can come with a solution through public-private partnerships. As such there are plans to increase the number of current diploma courses and vocational courses in agricultural education," he added.

Prof Raghuvir Singh, Vice Chancellor, Teerthankar Mahaveer University, Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, said that the role of agricultural education is to prepare students to face real life challenges. "The primary task of teachers is to ratchet-up the students interest in the classroom. The philosophy should be to ensure students involvement in learning and encouraging the students' creativity, he added.

Kunwar Shekhar Vijendra, Chancellor, Shobhit University, Uttar Pradesh, shed a light over the primary purpose of education and classified it into three segments such as creation of knowledge, integration of knowledge and application of knowledge. "Creation of knowledge happens when we join hands and resources. The purpose can be fulfilled when we join hands and make resources available to each other. Currently the optimum utiliszation of resources is only 30 per cent in institutions, by sharing the resources we can increase the efficiency of resources," he explained.