New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Monday appealed to stakeholders in the education sector to speed-up the process of setting up the digital university announced in this year’s annual budget. The PM was speaking at a webinar organised by the Ministry of Education to discuss the implementation of this year’s education budget.
The setting up of a digital university, said Modi, will solve the problem of lack of seats in universities and colleges across the country and appealed to stakeholders, inducing the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and others, to speed up the process.
“The National Digital University is a one of its kind step in the education system of India. I see such potential in digital university that it can solve the problem of seats in universities completely. It will prepare the youth for learning and re-learning processes” he said.
“I appeal to the many stakeholders including UGC, AICTE and others to speed up the process,” he added.
Modi also spoke about the importance of the animation industry in India and how we should focus on leveraging animation talent. The PM focused on five important aspects of the education budget in his address in Moday’s webinar — universalisation of quality education, skill development, internationalisation of education, urban planning and design and AVGC (animation, visual effects, gaming and comics).
Talking about the AVGC sector, PM Modi said, “There is a huge employment potential in this sector. It is a massive global market.”
How the digital university will function
While announcing the budget for 2022-23 on 1 February, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the setting up of a “National Digital University”.
“A digital university will be established to provide access to students across the country to world-class quality universal education, with personalised learning experience at their doorsteps. This will be made available in different Indian languages and ICT (Information and Communications Technology) formats,” she had said in her budget speech.
According to officials in the education ministry, while the idea of a digital university is still at a nascent stage, what the government is essentially planning to do is create an ecosystem through a hub-spoke model. A hub-spoke model is one where the information is generated at the centre (hub) and is distributed through channels to the final location (spokes). The hubs in this case will be existing universities that will come together to create content and take it to the learners through various channels.
The finance minister in her budget speech had added: “The university will be built on a networked hub-spoke model, with the hub building cutting-edge ICT expertise. The best public universities and institutions in the country will collaborate as a network of hub-spokes.”
The idea of the digital university will be further discussed Monday during the day-long webinar organised by the ministry.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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