The State will introduce inter-disciplinary courses in the higher education sector to enhance the skill sets of graduates. The budget has reaffirmed the government’s accent on introducing programmes in emerging areas of importance and efforts are under way to commence them at the earliest.
The Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) has constituted a panel, led by its vice chairman Rajan Gurukkal, to design such courses before recommending them for implementation by higher education institutions.
To fast-track the endeavour, the council’s governing body recently mooted a strategy to implement the new generation programmes even before the new posts are sanctioned by the government. Under the scheme, universities could be permitted to meet the expenses for salary for teachers from the fees collected from students.
Government funds
The additional expenditure necessary for running such programmes could be met by the government which will have to provide funds to universities in the form of matching grants. The council also proposed a formula of 75:25 as the ratio of funding shares that will have to be met by the government and the university respectively to implement the scheme.
Elaborating on the need to introduce such programmes, Kerala State Planning Board member B. Ekbal, who is also a member of the KSHEC governing body, pointed out that the State universities had largely confined themselves to traditional courses, despite the integration of various academic disciplines world over.
“The concept of basic science has gradually given way to the integration of physical science with biological science, social science with mathematics and so on. This is where we find the significance of courses such as bioinformatics, computational linguistics, and cognitive science. Barring a few universities that have introduced such programmes, we have not progressed much in the direction,” he said, adding that the curriculum must ideally nurture both skill and domain knowledge to enhance students’ employability.
Disconnect
He said there had been a disconnect between the higher education and the productive sectors in the State, leading to a stagnation of the latter.
The introduction of such courses would have a cascading impact on such avenues.
