Hyderabad, 3rd August 2024: The two day Conference on Empowering Education Ecosystem, with the theme Resilience and Adaptability: Navigating Challenges in Education; hosted by FICCI, in collaboration with the Government of Telangana and The Telangana Council of Higher Education (TGCHE), was inaugurated by Chief Guest Prof. M Jagadesh Kumar, Chairman, University Grants Commission; today at ITC Kakatiya. Ms Sridevasena, IAS, Commissioner Technical and Collegiate Education, Government of Telangana; Prof. T G Sitharam, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE); Dr B V R Mohan Reddy, Founder Chairman, Cyient & Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Hyderabad & Roorke; Prof. Limbadri, Chairman, Telangana Council of Higher Education; Mr. Sudhakar Rao, Chairman, FICCI Telangana Education Committee and Prof. J Prabhakar Rao, Co-Chairman, FICCI Telangana Education Committee, Mr Suchindra Kumar, Partner & Education sector leader, PwC; graced the occasion among others. A report on “Empowering Telangana Education System”, a joint report of FICCI & PwC was released and given to the government.

In his keynote address Prof. M Jagadesh Kumar, said, I particularly liked the two words they choose in the theme for this conference, resilience and adaptability, to understand these two we need to look at the comprehensive picture of the need for providing high quality education for the our young population in the country. This picture has two sides, on one side the question that is coming frequently in our minds is the kind of future that all of us would like to have, obviously we want to have a future that is sustainable, secure, peaceful and healthy, we are all on the same page on this, but 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 and increasing demands for clean energy, clean water, food, access to health facility, access to good education, and then we have the challenges of the multi-dimensional poverty, the economic systems becoming unstable, the climate change, the fight to control in the rise of global temperature. On one side we have our aspirations and on the other side we have the challenges. 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. In order to do this we have to bring several reforms in our educational system, starting from school to higher education. 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 this NEP 2020 are very clear, they are we would like to provide learning outcomes based education to our students, we want to provide personalised education to our students and also provide the education at a mass scale considering the number of students that we have, These 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 the societal competency levels that will enhance the productivity levels, that will enhance the strength of the economic system, which will help us to invest more funds into the education so that we reach out to a larger number of people. However, when you look at the higher education sector, out of 4.3 crore students that that we have, nearly 94% of the students are in 482 private universities, 487 state funded universities and 130 deemed to be private universities. To realise the dream we set for ourselves we need to understand that our teachers are the foundation of our educational system, we must do the capacity building of our teachers. We already launched the Malavia Mission Teacher training program, it’s a free online training program. My request to all the educational institutions is to encourage your teachers to take this capacity building training programs. We must strengthen the research ecosystem in our universities. I was surprised to realise when I took up the chairmanship of UGC, that in large number of universities there was no concept of R&D cell and we brought out the guidelines and I am glad to inform that now hundreds of universities have established the R&D cell. Today there is a need to train our younger faculty on how you draft a project proposal. Because less than 25% project proposals get the funding. How do we ensure that our younger faculty have good knowledge about commercialising their own research by converting into a protype, by starting a startup company. Do the universities have a good IP policy, UGC has come up with guidelines. The other challenge we face in our university system is the use of conventional ways of conducting our business, be it student admission, or finance or the administration, there is a greater need for you to use digital platforms. The ministry of education has built Samarth platform, which has 18 ERP modules to manage every aspect of the educational institution. It is free for all government institutions, what stops you from adopting these free digital platforms, you must come forward and invest your effort in this to transform the way you govern the institutions. As I said, when we want to reach out to large number of students, using just the physical mode of education is not sufficient, you must gear up yourself to train your teachers to create digital content. Today we have around 85 universities offering ODL and online programs, around 1150 universities in our country, why can’t the other universities come forward to offer online education. Nearly 60% of the colleges in our country are in rural areas and 45% of the universities are in rural areas, they do not have good faculty members to teach the students in emerging areas. But we have a huge digital public infrastructure by the name Swayam, with over 3000 courses. UGC has permitted that students can register on the ABC portal and can take up to 40% of their degree credits from the Swayam portal. We already have 4.3 crores, but the numbers need to pushed up and your role is critical. Today there is an emerging area known as Prompt Engineering, thousands of prompt engineers are required by the industry, but our industries are not ready to offer such courses. Though an engineering tag is there to it, you can train a commerce, psychology student to become prompt engineers. We must ensure that because of the huge gap that we have between the skill sets that the students get from the education in the universities and the requirement of the industries and that is leading to unemployment but underemployment. There are huge number of jobs but students are not ready, one of the top priorities for UGC now is to provide skill education to our students as part of their degree programs.

Ms Sridevasena, IAS, Commissioner Technical and Collegiate Education, Government of Telangana; said, out of my experience in the Collegiate Education, I can say good days have arrived for the department, for the reason that none less than the Chief minister is heading this department today. In no uncertain terms he told us his desire to see change and that is visible as you can see today itself we have a huge program at the LB Stadium, where around 50,000 teachers of school education department are going to be addressed directly by him, these are teachers who got promotion after about 10 to 13 years. Chief minister will tell the teachers what the priorities are and how he intends to take it forward. The government has taken a stand to protect the core engineering branches as there are hardly any takers for them, because computer engineering alone can’t run the country. There is also a need to upskill our polytechnics and the government will upgrade all the polytechnics at least at the rate of one per district to make it a government engineering college. This is important step in. making of a skilled economy and empowering the youth of this state. We have come up with the skilled university, for which the CM laid the foundation yesterday. This is another huge step in the field of skilling in Telangana. It is important to link the industry and the educational sector, and our efforts are in tandem with what the needs of the industry.

Dr B V R Mohan Reddy said, talking about the navigating of the challenges in education, for me there are several challenges that are in the near horizon, a horizon which doesn’t seem to have an end. We will continue to have challenges with our education system for several years to go. These challenges are coming in because there is change and this change is constant, and it is evolving lot more rapidly than in the past. What are these changes coming in from and certainly all of us put our finger on technology, its seems to be evolving at a pace which was never been experienced by mankind, we don’t know what we are going to experience as we go further, but as now that’s where we stand on. With the change of technology the job landscape is changing. There are several jobs of the past we don’t even hear about like stenographers and several new jobs are appearing at this point of time, like cyber security specialists, data scientists. What are the skills our students need as we move forward with this complete juggernaut of change I am talking to you about. We need to engage our students to get into the mode of thinking, they should get into critical, creative thinking, design thinking, they can’t live in this world trust me with our rote learning methodologies. They have to adopt to newer technologies and new skills as quickly as possible and there has to be a mind-set shift to ensure that it becomes a reality. Also learning is not going to be one time, like in the past having a degree will not suffice. So the students should adopt to the art of lifelong learning. The key is in the faculty, upgradation of their skill sets is the need of the hour. The future is all about student centric experiential learning, no more it can be teacher centric.

In his welcome address Mr. Sudhakar Rao said, We have come together with a shared commitment to advancing education, fostering resilience and adapting to the evolving challenges. Your presence here underscores the importance of our collective mission to empower the education system, education as you know is the corner stone of thriving society, which empowers individuals and students who are our future citizens. We nurture innovation and build the foundation of our future. The theme of this conference is Resilience and Adaptability: Navigating Challenges in Education; wouldn’t have been more pertinent as we confront an era marked by rapid change, technological advances and unprecedented global challenges. The constant challenges of the world is what education is supposed to empower all of us with. Education doesn’t prepare you from day one soon after you complete your education, it prepares you for the unseen, unforeseen stresses and shocks and that’s what all of us are working relentlessly to provide. Here at this Conference we will be talking about the issues relevant to the entire country.

The thrust of the Conference is to create a dynamic platform for educators, researchers, policymakers, industry leaders, and stakeholders across educational institutions, from schools to universities to collaborate, innovate, and transform the landscape of education, during the next two days, says Prof. J Prabhakar Rao.

The exclusive conference designed for leaders in education brings together top management from higher educational institutions, including Chancellors & Vice Chancellors, Deans, Registrars, Directors of Universities. Joining them are esteemed delegates from both technical and non-technical colleges, as well as visionary founders, CEOs, chairpersons, directors, and principals from schools.

The other guest speakers comprise of eminent educators, policymakers, and regulators from the education sector, like Prof. T G Sitharam, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE); Dr. S S Mantha, Former Chairman AICTE; Prof. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, Vice Chancellor, JNU, New Delhi; Dr. Bhawna Taragi, Deputy Head, RDCD, The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE); are among others who has shared their invaluable insights into empowering and revolutionizing the education ecosystem at this high level summit on education, during the two days.

The Conference provides a platform to connect with Educational Attachés from various countries including those from the USA, UK, Australia, Germany, and France. This prestigious event will be a dynamic platform to share Innovative Thoughts and Ideas, exchange Best Practices in Education and foster Collaborations with Renowned International Institutions. It provides an opportunity to establish meaningful partnerships that can shape the future of education. It will be an unparalleled experience for networking and collaboration on a global scale for the delegates.

During the two days various parallel workshops tailored for different management levels of educational institutions, covering topics like, Innovation Policy and Ecosystem, Data-driven decision making, Enhancing teaching and research skills of faculty members and Digital teaching skills and several other insightful themes are lined up. These workshops help the Management of educational institutions, like Chancellors, Vice-Chancellors, CEOs, Directors, Principals, Vice-principals, Faculty to gain actionable insights to enhance teaching and learning skills and to expand their horizons and stay ahead in the education landscape.