Centres of excellence to come up at 5 engg colleges in Gujarat

The state industries department on Wednesday signed MoUs with Siemens Software and other companies for setting up centres of excellence in five engineering colleges in the state. The MoUs were signed at a seminar related to qualitative improvements in higher education at Gandhinagar.

According to officials, the centres of excellence will be set up on public private partnership (PPP) model at an estimated cost of Rs500 crore. The government will contribute Rs85 crore for these centres. Siemens will manage them for two years and then hand them over to state government. Around 50,000, students will benefit from this initiative. As many as 13 such centres have been set up in engineering colleges so far in co-operation with the private sector.

Speaking at the event, noted political science scholar, Lord Bhikhu Parekh, stressed on the need to improve quality of higher education. He called for sending student groups to foreign universities for research programmes, research linkages between Indian and foreign universities, and inviting foreign faculties to the country.

Later, at the valedictory function of the one-day seminar, chief minister Narendra Modi called for synergy between storehouses of knowledge in universities with human resources for nation building.

He called for the need to free universities from the burden of administrative rigmarole to let them focus on teaching and research. He listed defence equipment, shipping and automobiles as some of the areas where Indian could excel and bridge the huge gap.