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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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Schooled
in austerity, US students reluctantly borrow Campus
Notes
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Impart practical knowledge IT is claimed that education is for the purpose of knowledge or enlightenment. Is that the real purpose of today’s education? Are we sending our children aged 2 or 3 to nursery, KG and pre-nursery for this very purpose? Isn’t it true that working parents “get rid of” their child during working hours of their office? Isn’t college education being obtained with the purpose of making one self-eligible for some job? Today, the majority of college students are wandering without any purpose. Many of them just take admission to the college for getting maintenance allowances or scholarships. They do not know the proper skills which suit their capabilities and intelligence. Also, many parents are not fully aware of the current situations and job opportunities. It is too late when the reality is faced by them that their children have been made machines. Though steps being taken by the government regarding the establishment of new educational institutions are really praiseworthy, there is a glut of private universities to top the continuing mushroom growth of professional colleges in the field of higher education. The motives attached to their economic gains are not hidden from the government and the academia. Do you think that the implementation of semester system, internal assessment system and grading system is sufficient for maintaining quality and meeting requirements of making one a good human being? The present education system does not seem relevant to human and environmental needs and conditions in relation to human betterment. Look at the quality of degree or diploma holders that our universities and colleges produce, the values they acquire, employability of graduates and earnings associated with their education. In the present scenario, the need to develop human resources of a high caliber has increased. Therefore, we will have to prepare students by keeping in mind the present global scenario. Technical education can be able to become the wheel of progress only when it will stop forging machines and start producing geniuses having practical knowledge of these machines. We need engineering means to understand a problem and find its solution. Today, bookish engineering is being taught in our technical institutes, which has no relation to our day-to-day problems. Stress should be on solving problems practically and gaining practical knowledge. One must be taught application of knowledge gained instead of mugging up definitions. The Right to Education Act is, of course, an appreciable step taken by the government that allows education to all. It remains to be seen how long it will take for its implementation in a country like India, where so long time has been taken to take the decision that education is the right of every child or that every child has right to go to school. Nowadays, education has become a lucrative business. Children are under stress of getting more marks. Parents, teachers and students all are running in this rat race of competition. Coaching centers are minting money, opening shops of coaching in every street and tempting parents and their children on the basis of surety of success. Study has become the most important means of earning money, social status and laurel. Therefore, it is not difficult to imagine why most of the IITians prefer to join big corporate companies. In this scenario, who will become a teacher or scientist if all our brightest brains become worshippers of money? In a country like India with cultural pluralities and diversities, it is essential that students imbibe values commensurate with social, cultural and environmental realities at the local, national and universal levels. There is a fall in moral, social and human values. Students don’t respect their elders or teachers. They can’t do without mobile phones to which they are attached more than their parents and teachers. Moral and ethical values have no meaning to most of such students. Idealists claim that education is given for the purpose of knowledge or enlightenment or make good human beings. If this is the real purpose of today’s education, then it is far from being satisfactory. Values like truth, righteous conduct, cooperation and mutual understanding must be inculcated in children by providing healthy learning atmosphere at home and school. Students paying high fees obviously have no consideration for public services. To recover the investments made in education seems to be the sole objective of today’s students. No wonder the products of purely materialistic education cannot be expected to be otherwise. Therefore, teachers and parents will have to present themselves as role models. Otherwise, they must be ready to face consequences. The writer is Associate Professor, Government College for Girls, Panchkula
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Schooled in austerity, US students reluctantly borrow WHEN Emi Young decided to attend Pomona College in California a few years ago, she broke with a tradition as closely associated with US universities as fraternity parties and cramming for final exams. Young did not take out one dime of student loans. Moreover, she preferred Pomona to other schools because it does not include loans in the financial aid packages offered to students, solely supplying grants and student employment. “I don’t necessarily want to feel completely tied down in what I do with my education because of the debt I come out with,” said the politics and philosophy major who starts her third year this fall, and has her sights set on law school. Like many young people across the country, Young is nervous about starting her career with the baggage of debt. Last summer, a how-to guide on getting through college without loans by University of Massachusetts student Zac Bisonnette called Debt-Free U shot to the list of top 20 bestsellers on Amazon.com the day it was released. State governments, only now beginning to recover from the collapse of their revenues in the 2007-09 recession, have slashed higher education funding, causing tuition to balloon at public universities, long considered the best bargain. Many have also cut the grants they offer to offset education expenses. The federal Pell Grant programme has also pulled back to comply with the Congressional budget deal struck this spring. Then, there is unemployment. Students may not be able to work their way through school and parents who are laid off may not be able to help foot the costs. And as the long-term unemployed return to school, they create competition for lecture hall seats and money. The stock market, meanwhile, devastated college savings. “I do know that when I was first applying and in the first year of college, with all of the financial crisis going on, the savings we’d put away — the investments — dropped to half their value. If I was able to wait, the values of those accounts would go up again,” Young said.
— Reuters
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Campus Notes HARYANA Agricultural University has singed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd. of Andhra Pradesh for production and marketing of maize varieties HM-8, HM-9 and HM-10. In lieu of the technology, HAU will get an amount of Rs 7.5 lakh. At the same time, the farmers of Andhra Pradesh will get improved seeds of maize varieties. The Vice-Chancellor, Dr K.S. Khokhar, emphasised the need for Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for speedier development of the agriculture sector. He said the new technology was available with the public sector while the resources for dissemination of the technology to the grass-roots level were available with private sector. Hence, their partnership would prove to be a milestone for the faster development of agriculture. Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary
and Animal Sciences, Hisar The recently established Business Planning and Development (BPD) unit of Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (LLRUVAS) has started Technology Business Incubator (TBI) in consortium mode with the BPD unit of Haryana Agricultural University and funding from the Indian Council for Agricultural Research. The incubator will provide office and laboratory facilities for entrepreneurs and start-up companies. TBI will operate under the chairmanship of Dr A. K. Pruthi, Dean, College of Veterinary Sciences, and Dr N. K. Kakker, Principal Investigator, BPD Unit. Vice-Chancellor Hardeep Kumar said LLRUVAS was the first amongst the veterinary universities in India to start a BPD unit in April this year and again the first to start TBI. Dr Pruthi said the milk urea detection technology developed by the scientists of the College of Veterinary Sciences had become very popular across the country. He said a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for non-exclusive licensing for commercial production and marketing of Milk Urea Detection Kits had recently been signed with an entrepreneur. Another request for co-business incubation with BPD Unit, Anand Agricultural University, Anand, Gujarat was also under consideration. Book on environment released Vice Chancellor Hardeep Kumar released a book entitled Environmental Security: Human and Animal Health edited by Dr Sudhi Ranjan Garg, Professor, Department of Veterinary Public Health andEpidemiology, College of Veterinary Sciences. Based on the modern concept of "One Health" the book, which has articles by experts from varied disciplines across the country, envisages the futuristic strategies for protection of health of human beings as well as animals. The book has 39 chapters that deal with very important environmental issues. These include health risk from the distillery waste water, synthetic dyes in textile industries, tanneries, vehicles, asbestos, drug resistant bacteria, cyanobacterial toxins, acid rain, occupational exposures, toxic plants, genetically modified organisms, stray animals, methane emission from livestock and dead animal carcasses. Vets take oath As many as 52 veterinarians of the 2006 batch of the College of Veterinary Sciences were administered the oath of professional ethics at a ceremony held here recently. Vice-Chancellor Hardeep Kumar was the chief guest on the occasion. The Dean of the college Dr A.K.Pruthi, administered the oath. Speaking on the occasion, the Vice-Chancellor congratulated the fresh graduates on their achievement and exhorted them to work wholeheartedly for the welfare of society in general and animals in particular. He also listed various steps which the state government had taken for improving and preservation of best breeds of buffaloes and cows. — Contributed by Raman Mohan
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