The world has seen a new order in the last 21 months — a new life, with fundamental disruptions in education, healthcare and several other aspects. Rethinking and redefining new goals across sector has been the prime agenda for country leaders, policy makers, young entrepreneurs, and students alike. With specific reference to reforms in education, and a deeper focus on remodelling technical education, India has risen like a phoenix by taking transformative, game-changing, and empowering measures.

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With educational reforms as a pressing priority of the government, and to develop skilled and trained labour force, there is plenty of focus on elevating higher education institutions to be “world-class,” so that they can operate at the forefront of intellectual and scientific development, as per the global rankings’ standards.

International experience shows that we need to follow three basic strategies to establish world-class universities:

(i) Upgrading a small number of existing universities that have the potential of excelling

(ii) Encouraging existing institutions to merge and transform into consolidated universities that would achieve the type of synergies corresponding to a world-class institution, and

(iii) Creating new world-class universities from scratch.

With Karnataka having 23 varsities, it was decided to upgrade the existing government colleges to give an autonomous status. Today, however, it is unlikely that a world-class university can be rapidly created without a favourable policy environment and direct public initiative and financial support. In that light, the Karnataka Assembly recently passed a Bill to make the iconic University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE) into an autonomous institution like the IITs.

National Education Policy 2020 is the foundation on which the UVCE Bill 2021 is created. The Policy is also the corner stone for us to evolve the Super 30 Engineering Colleges with one institution in each district. The accent here is to take up those colleges that lack quality teaching and develop them as model colleges concentrating on faculty training and industry collaborations. We are also proposing Karnataka Shikshana Āyōga Bill and Karnataka State Higher Education Institutions Bill in the future. All these efforts will be a huge shot in the arm for NEP 2020 implementation in the state.

From admission to assessment to affiliation, academic activities of all public universities in Karnataka are being integrated on one platform — Unified University and College Management System (UUCMS). It is a single platform for all University functions and ensures transparency, efficiency, accountability and accessibility. It brings all the 23 State Public Universities and over 3500 affiliated colleges under one umbrella. UUCMS will emerge as the beacon of Center for Smart Governance (CSG).

We are also continuously ramping up digital and human infrastructure to harness the power of technology that is favourable to the changing environs. The state has also been at the forefront of the digital education revolution, with it being the first state in the country to launch a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS) to encourage and facilitate bilingual learning and both online and offline modes. This initiative has had a progressive impact on the teaching and learning process of 4.5 lakh students and 24,000 teaching faculty. Network-enabled smart classrooms with digital boards and tablets and PCs distributed for needy students completes the digital education ecosystem.

With the foremost determinant of academic excellence being an outstanding faculty, research universities within the higher education system are playing a critical role in training professionals, high-level specialists, scientists and researchers needed by the economy, and in generating new knowledge in support of the national innovation system.

A crucial factor to realize our vision to become a global knowledge superpower is to transform world-class campuses into research-intensive universities. Knowledge, research, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit go hand-in-hand. We are encouraging universities in Karnataka to become centers of excellence in research as well.

Another element to make institutions truly international requires giving them a degree of academic and managerial autonomy. World-class universities operate in an environment that fosters competitiveness, unrestrained scientific inquiry, critical thinking, innovation and creativity. Institutions that have substantial autonomy are also more flexible because they are not constrained by cumbersome bureaucracies and externally imposed standards, even considering the legitimate accountability mechanisms that bind them. As a result, they can manage their resources with agility and quickly respond to the demands of a rapidly changing global market. UVCE will function with an autonomy at par with the IIMs and the IITs.

However, just investing money in an institution and giving it the right infrastructure is not enough. An appropriate governance framework at the systemic level that guarantees full autonomy and strong leadership at the institutional level is needed to provide a bold vision and gather the academic community around institutional efforts to achieve excellence.

The vibrant interaction among these factors is the distinguishing characteristic of world-class universities. With great power comes great responsibility! Indeed.

With all the changes being brought to bring our current higher education institutions at par with global universities, there is also this need for institutions to remain vigilant and to maintain a sense of urgency in order to avoid complacency. This aspect involves inspired leadership, continuous monitoring and self-assessment to identify dysfunctions or threats, the capacity to act quickly to address them, and the willingness to constantly explore areas for improvement.

The highest-ranked universities are the ones that make significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge through research, teach with the most innovative curricula and pedagogical methods, and produce graduates who stand out because of their success in intensely competitive arenas.

There is no universal recipe that makes a world-class university. Furthermore, the transformation of the university system cannot take place in isolation. A long-term vision for creating world-class universities and its implementation should be closely articulated with the country’s overall economic and social development strategy, ongoing changes and planned reforms at the lower levels of the education system and plans for the development of other types of tertiary education institutions to build an integrated system of teaching, research and technology-oriented institutions. It is in this direction that we decided to implement the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP2020) in Karnataka. We were the first state to do so.

But this is a moment of awakening, a moment to transform the Indian education system and reclaim our position as a global knowledge superpower.

The author, Dr Ashwathnarayan CN, is Minister for IT/BT/Science & Technology & Higher Education, Skill Development & Livelihood, Government of Karnataka