Prime focus on academic interests in varsities: CM Pinarayi Vijayan

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday said the government was committed to bring about changes in existing rules and practices in university administration so that academic interest gets due weightage. The changes would be made on the basis of state higher education council’s report in this regard, he said.

The CM was addressing the first meeting of state higher education council’s advisory committee. “Outcome-based education is now an accepted norm, globally. Universities should redesign academic courses as per the new concept. I hope universities would soon publish their graduate attributes,” Vijayan said.

Higher education sector should be capable of absorbing the positive changes happening in the international knowledge arena. The sector has much to do in the rebuilding of Kerala. However, teaching community’s response to ‘salary challenge’ was disappointing, he said.

The CM said there should be provisions to publish academic journals reflecting the research and contributions of teaching community and such journals should be published online. “Human resources and infrastructure facilities are not the same in every university. But the performance of even those which have better facilities is not encouraging. Higher education institutions are supposed to equip students to face global competition. To achieve that target, universities need to scale up their quality into global standards,” he said.

He appreciated the compulsory social service scheme run by Calicut University and urged other universities to follow the suit. “Since a NAAC accreditation system is in place, the council should rethink about the plans for establishing a state-level agency for the accreditation of higher education institutions,” he added.

The CM said that government would seriously consider the council’s report on the changes to be made in the functioning of autonomous college in the state. Preliminary steps have been taken for establishing an open university in the state.

Higher education minister K T Jaleel, higher education council vice-chairman Rajan Gurukkal, higher education principal secretary Usha Titus, advisory committee members Prabhat Patnaik and K Sachidanandan also attended the meeting.