‘Prepare pupils to face challenges’

Patna: Education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said here on Saturday that universities should not serve merely as ‘degree-churning’ factories but should be able to hone the skill of their students in such a way as to make them employable.
Inaugurating the newly constructed vocational courses building and ‘foundation pillar’ of Patna Science College the minister observed that by imparting only textbook knowledge to the youths, institutions of higher education have been only adding to the number of the ‘unemployable degree holders’.“If their learning is based on skill development, youths will be able to contribute significantly to the national development processes,” he said.
He said Bihar is a state with the maximum population density in the world and, hence, it is necessary that the state should utilize its human resources in the best possible manner. Youths should be groomed to face the challenges of the modern era and compete with the world in the job market, he said. Patna University vice-chancellor Girish Kumar Choudhary presided.
Choudhary pointed out that with the proliferation of educational institutions in the state in recent years the state’s gross enrolment ratio (GER) has increased from mere 13% to 20% in a couple of years. “Due to the efforts made by the Nitish government there is at least one university in each division, one centre of PG teaching in each district and at least one degree college in each subdivision in the state,” he said, adding that the study centres of Nalanda Open University were being set up at block level so that students of remote areas are not denied access to higher education.
Eulogizing the valuable contributions made by Patna University in the growth and development of higher education, the minister said the government has recently sanctioned a sum of Rs 150 crore to the university for its infrastructural development. Now there would be no dearth of accommodation in offices, classrooms and laboratories and libraries.
The education minister felicitated some former principals of the college, including K K Jha, S N Guha, Deepak Kumar Sharma, Radha Kant Prasad and K C Sinha on the occasion.
In his presidential remarks, the vice-chancellor said an atmosphere of research has been created in the university with the active participation of teachers and students in research work. “During the past six months, as many as 110 research proposals have been submitted by the university teachers to different funding agencies and many of them have already got the sanction from the concerned agencies,” he said.