MANGALORE Nov 21: Commissioner of Collegiate Education Nagambika Devi has said that the department is in the process of a major overhaul of higher education, in pursuit of “excellence, expansion and inclusive education”.

Briefing presspersons on the sidelines of an official visit to the city on Friday, she said that the State’s gross enrolment ratio (GER) was at an unsatisfactory 11.6 per cent. (The GER is calculated based on how many eligible students between the ages of 18 and 25 go in for higher education.)

GER target

She said that although the department had achieved 20 per cent increase in the GER during the present academic year to arrive at 11.6 per cent, a lot of work still had to be done in this area. The Union Government had set a GER target of 36 per cent. “We have set ourselves a target of 20 per cent GER by 2020 and even that calls for a lot of work,” she said.

Action plan

She stressed that the vision of the department was, however, not limited to just improving the GER.

A slew of programmes had been drawn to qualitatively improve the education system. “We are trying to improve our present infrastructure, but in doing so we are also trying to make better use of the existing infrastructure,” she said.

Aptamitra

The Aptamitra project, she said, was one such programme being implemented in this direction. Under this programme, large government-aided colleges would come to the aid of ailing government-run colleges by sharing their infrastructure, she said.

“Facilities such as science laboratories, libraries, playgrounds and auditoriums of some government-aided colleges will be opened for use by students from one partner college.

Since most aided colleges have a shortage of qualified and experienced teachers, teachers from one government college will visit the other aided college for guest lectures,” she said.

An active student exchange programme would be encouraged. At present, 100 government colleges and an equal number of aided colleges had been identified for this programme, Ms. Devi said.

The Sahyog project, which promotes excellence in higher education, would include partners from the corporate sector. Under this programme, representatives from the corporate sector would conduct training programmes for students from government and aided colleges.

This programme had been developed jointly by the department, the Karnataka Knowledge Commission and the Karnataka Skills Development Corporation as part of the State Government’s Modular Employment Scheme. In addition to 60-odd colleges that had been identified for this programme across the State, arts stream students from Bijapur and Kolar districts would be given special attention, she said.

Hindu