Joint ventures with foreign universities: A panacea in Covid times
Neeraj Bagga
Tribune News Service
Amritsar, June 26
Irrespective of the pandemic upsetting the educational apparatus completely, Dr Akashdeep Singh of Global Educational Institutes is positive of limping back to normalcy once the situation normalises.
To catch that situation, his institution is ready to enter into joint ventures with foreign universities through student and faculty exchange programmes. Already the impact of globalisation was being felt on the education industry as more and more students were going overseas. So, they prefer admission to those courses that brighten their prospects of going abroad.
Beginning from BTech and MBA courses with a faculty of 40 and 280 students in 2008, the educational institution now boasts of 200 teachers and 2,000 students.
On how the idea of setting up an educational institution germinated, he recalled that during the course of doctorate, he had to conduct the surveys of management educational institutions in the state. He found that there was a big gap between the perceptions and expectations of students and parents from the institutions and what was being actually delivered. To eliminate the gap, he decided to introduce the education industry.
Earlier, he finished BTech in mechanical engineering from Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana, and did MBA from Guru Nanak Dev University. Later, he taught business management at Punjab College of Teaching Education, Ludhiana, for a year.
He is happy to say that the maiden batch of BTech managed to bag two gold medals, a feat which is still unbroken.
Immediately shifting to online mode of education was a challenge which was deftly handled by specifically designing the curriculum accordingly, power point presentations were prepared which were mailed along with class notes and corresponding texts to students for their comprehension in the evening. Besides, a lot of webinars were held in which leading industrialists were invited to encourage students.
