Irani emphasises need to develop skills in higher education

Emphasing on the need to develop skills in higher education, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani Saturday exhorted states and union territories to adopt the credit framework for skills and education and the choice based credit system in universities.

These, she said, would "give choices to students and also provide respectability to skill programmes".

The credit framework, launched on National Education Day Nov 11, will allow vertical and lateral mobility within the vocational education system and between the current education systems.

The minister was speaking at the inauguration of the workshop on skills in higher education organized by the ministry's department of higher education here.

About the ministry's newly launched Know Your College portal -- developed for helping a prospective student make informed choices with regard to the selection of an appropriate college for pursuing higher education by providing the necessary information - Irani said that "some 2,00,000 hours of lectures have been uploaded for students for various courses and disciplines".

Highlighting the purpose of the workshop, Minister of State for HRD Upendra Kushwaha said that it intended to "link today's youth with employability".