Satyanarayan Mohanty, Secretary, Department of Higher Education,today emphasized the need for providing quality learning across all educational institutions in India as quality education has emerged as one of the daunting challenges for the country. The educational institutions must become drivers of quality. 

While delivering his special address on Future of Higher Education in India on day two of the 10th FICCI Higher Education Summit 2014 on the theme Higher Education Vision 2030: Making it Happen, Mr. Mohanty said that the education DNA of the country needs to undergo a sea change and the focus must shift from doling out degrees to value for money education. He stressed that education must make a person employable.

Another persistent problem that the government faced was the legacy challenge - whether education is a merit or private good? Mr. Mohanty stated that public private positioning of the education sector was being thought through. He added that for higher education to flourish, the government was looking at the options of a free market supply and highly regulated supply. However, Mr. Mohanty cautioned that in a free market when an institution would close down, it would render thousands of students without academic qualification who would lose the money that they had invested in their education. 

Speaking about the judgment passed by the Supreme Court of India stating that an educational institute cannot run for profit but can make reasonable surplus, he said that there was ambiguity on what would be a reasonable surplus. Mr. Mohanty added that the debate between profit versus non-profit educational institutions was still not closed.

Mr. Mohanty advocated the adoption of blended learning. Classroom teaching coupled with technological learning, where teachers would play the role of a facilitator would be an ideal set up for imparting higher education. He added that many education-related schemes and programmes are being rolled out by the government for students across the country. The progammes aim to facilitate students from all strata of society to attain quality education.

The Secretary released a vision paper of FICCI titled ‘MOOCS and the Future of Indian Higher Education’ and also felicitated the winners of the poster making competition.

Earlier, Prof. Craig Calhoun, Director, London School of Economics, UK, in his keynote address, emphasized on the need to create an educational ecosystem in India. The ecosystem would be a combination of all types of educational institutions in the country and could work in tandem to cater to different set of students, fulfilling their aspirations.  He added that India needs as sustained growth cycle for moving forward and education was an essential component for growth.