ITANAGAR, 26 Feb: The education department of Rono Hills-based Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU), in collaboration with Delhi-based National Institute of Educational Planning & Administration NIEPA, launched a five-day workshop on ‘Leadership capacity development of college principals of Northeast India’ at a city hotel here on Monday.
“The Indian higher education system has grown remarkably in the post-independence period and has become one of the largest systems in the world. The system comprises 1,168 universities, 45,473 colleges and 12,002 standalone institutions with 43.3 million students and 1.6 million teachers,” RGU informed in a release.
The workshop is being organised with the aim of “facilitating systematic review of the higher education system; discussing the issues, challenges and strategies
for visionary leadership; and facilitating principals with strategies for overcoming the challenges of managing their colleges,” the release stated.
Twenty-nine college principals from all the states in the Northeast are participating in the workshop to “discuss NEP-2020 implementing challenges; holistic and multidisciplinary in context of NEP-2020; curriculum structure; higher education in the Northeast; quality of higher education; role of educational leaders; effective governance in higher education; internationalisation in higher education; financial management, and resource mobilisation,” it said.
“All the participants and resource persons will visit a leading college for learning, sharing and networking in Ziro (L/Subansiri) on 29 February, and thereafter there shall be a presentation on the best practices of the visited college,” the release stated.
During the inaugural programme, RGU Vice Chancellor Prof Saket Kushwaha said that “the common feature of all world-class institutions globally, including India, has indeed been the existence of strong self-governance and outstanding merit-based appointments of institutional leaders.”
“Institutions’ heads should not develop an attitude to complain about the system but come forward to find the solution to the problem,” he said.
NIEPA Head Prof Sudhanshu Bushan explained how institutional heads are in a dilemma and are facing challenges in implementing NEP-2020 because the Indian higher education system is not homogeneous. “The nature of problem in one institute and one state is completely different from the other institution and state,” he said.
RGU Education & Sports Sciences Dean Prof T Lhungdim said that “the very objective of the workshop is to orient for implementing the significant recommendations of NEP-2020 at the college level and find solutions to the institutional issues and how to resolve them,” the release informed.
NIEPA Associate Professor Dr Sangeeta Angom, RGU Education HoD Prof PK Acharya, and RGU Education Department Associate Professor Dr Anga Padu also spoke, it said.
