FICCI Seventh Higher Education Summit

Conference Proceedings:

FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry), in collaboration with Planning Commission, Government of India and Ministry of Human Resource Development Government of India organized its seventh annual Higher Education Summit on November 11 & 12, 2011.

The participants in the Summit, from India and abroad, were from various areas working on the issue of Higher Education from different perspectives. There were key policy makers from the Government Departments, educationists from Universities and Higher Education Institutes and Corporates.

Broadly, the Conference could be divided into four sections viz., Plenary Sessions, Master Classes, One-to-One B2B Meetings and Exhibition further enriched by Keynote Addresses and Open House discussions. Apart from this there was insightful inaugural speech by Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia and a special inspiring address by Mr. Sam Pitroda. The conference was a good platform for Policy deliberations, Knowledge sharing, networking and professional interactions.

The Exhibition was inaugurated by Shri Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, GoI. There were stalls from various famous B-Schools and few IT Industries working in the area of Higher Education. In the four Master Classes the Key issues on developing National Knowledge Functional Hubs, Zero Tolerance to unfair practices, Global Roadmap and Leadership development were discussed.

There was an open house discussion on the Higher education in the 12th Plan. In these sessions the stakeholders had a direct meeting with the think tanks and other participants to have a quick outcome.

It was decided in the end of the Conference that the entre deliberations of the Conference will be shared with the GoI, which will help in the policy making and preparing a roadmap for the 12th Plan. The B2B meetings were for the mutual benefit of the Clients and the stakeholders and several business opportunities came up during these meetings between various Intra- and International organizations. Many of these were looking forward to work on the PPP model.

Most of the sessions in the Conference were discussing the issues of the Higher education from the stakeholder’s point of view, focusing on the indicators, pedagogy, methodology of teaching, skill development, world class education system etc. but the session before the concluding session needs special attention because it covered a very contemporary and relevant issue of Higher education from the perspective of the society.

This session was titled, ‘Strengthening Higher Education Linkages to Society’. In this session various issue related to strengthening of the linkages of Higher Education with society were presented by Dr. Rajesh Tandon, Ms. Janet Brown, Dr. Kimberley Matheson and Ms. Irina Ghose.

Dr. Tandon spoke about the relevance of Higher Education in shortening the knowledge gap and widening the knowledge horizons of the common man. He emphasized working with community thus encouraging the community participation and doing research to find out the gap areas implement the education policies accordingly. This needs participatory research and increased local participation in the Governance.
In this session the emphasis was on reaching to the common man as no one will come to the ‘Ivory Towers’ of education. Sometimes the aura of the place and the people bedazzles the vision of the common man working at the grassroots level who is running his life on the day to day basis.

They need livelihood related education with flexible teaching methods, friendly technology and simple to follow pedagogy.The overall outcome of the Conference was very promising. Several new business relations were developed, few new linkages were identified and several issues were discussed, which were most likely to pave their way into 12th Plan with the objective of making of new policies or reforming the existing ones.