High cost, corrosion of trust challenges for universities:Prez

The escalation of cost of learning and corrosion of trust are few factors impinge on administration of universities, President Pranab Mukherjee said today.
Addressing a function, he said sustaining and reinvigorating the higher education in India as well as in the world, has become a major challenge, especially in the public institutions.
The president said at least four distinct factors impinge from outside as well as inside on the administration of an institution of higher learning, that includes escalation of costs of learning and corrosion of trust.
Mukherjee said narrow pragmatics, i.E. Market-oriented fast-track skill acquisition, as the sole goal of learning; and the allure of invasive dominant communication systems depleting attention span, are other factors affecting administration of universities.

Any attempt to build or re-orient the higher education in such a situation requires administrative acumen, the president said in his address on the first convocation of the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) here.
"Cynicism is an easy alibi to evade responsibility. Any institutional future is dependent upon enabling the faculty, students and the staff to overcome cynicism. One way of achieving this is making everyone a stakeholder in collaborative institution-building.

"Immersive teaching supplemented by intensive research alone can advance the vision of the university in generating new knowledge and sharing it with everyone," he suggested.
The Ministry of External Affairs entrusted the EFLU with international responsibility for training diplomats and for designing trainer training programmes.

The university has set up centres for English language training in ASEAN countries and five new centres are coming up in African nations.
Telangana Governor E S L Narasimhan and other dignitaries were present during the function.