Though many in the sphere of academics and industry partnerships feel that education must be given to fit the needs of the industry, Dr. B M Hegde, Padma Bhushan awardee, made a statement that said both should not go hand in hand.
According to him, education has become an arranged marriage of sorts, where education is only provided to fit the needs of a particular industry. So, if the syllabus only caters to a specific job, students will be handicapped when it comes to other areas of study, and other types of careers they may want to switch to in the future.
Dr. B M Hegde, in a conference on ‘Reforming and Rejuvenating Higher Education’ organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the department of higher education, Tamil Nadu, maintains that education must be aimed at helping young minds flourish in any career that they may choose, and that knowledge should not have anything to do with money.
Examples of Academia-Industry Partnership in the Real World
In the field of medicine, many concepts and methods used are outdated as the older concepts are either still being taught in many medical schools, or are considered to be lucrative options, leading to a rise in the lack of ‘healthy’ minds.
Dr Hegde believes that teachers should be able to bring out the best in students; not just teach them specific and unwavering concepts in a particular area of study.
He says, “Education must be in the hands of educationists and not industrialists. Education requires rejuvenation.”
Current Scenario
Once the commercialisation of education occurred, many self-financing colleges were allowed to collect capitation fees. However, they followed the same syllabus, which is how they produced degree holders. If the industry anticipates global private players in education and regularly update the syllabus that the students are being taught, they will be able to continuously upgrade themselves.
VM Periasamy of B S Abdur Rahman University firmly believes that the affiliation system must be phased out as it is not a healthy practice for many educational institutions to be attached to one main university.