Role of universities in globalization

*Updating knowledge and skills vital:

*On line courses as distance education form:

Final part of the text of the speech by Mother Teresa Women’s University, Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu India Prof Aruna Sivakami Ananthakrishnan at South Eastern University Convocation First part of this article was published yesterday,

Now you find new Smart classrooms retrofitted with projectors, PCs and smart interactive boards. Technical Universities boast of 100 percent Wi-Fi environment. They have shelters built under trees called Inter-Net trees to enable the student to browse on their laptops in comfort whenever they want. Private Universities say their students are encouraged to learn by discovery not by rote, which involves a lot of in depth research, as they have Active Learning Laboratory.

They have institutional membership with other leading libraries in the country such as ARAI and IIT. Hence now the resources are shared by both the teacher and student through correspondence.

Academic standards

Computer science now even offers Bachelors degree in Computer Application for Deaf and Dumb students with special equipments and teaching tools. The private colleges also have a digital library for disabled technologies and audio software and touch tools. Each discipline and department can now function as a school altogether with its own customized facilities, laboratories, resource centres etc.

To-day is the day of Virtual Universities, it provides higher education programs, through electronic media, typically the Internet. Some want bricks and mortar institutions that provide online learning as part of their extended university course while others provide courses only on line. They are regarded as a form of distance education. Most of these organizations exist only as loosely tied combines of Universities, some are actual organizations with a legal framework, yet named virtual as they appear only on the Internet, without a physical location aside from administration units. Still other virtual universities can be organized through specific or multiple physical locations, with some having actual campuses to receive program delivery through technological media that is broadcast from another location, where real professors give televised lectures.

Professional guidance

The goal of virtual universities is to provide access to that part of the population who would not be able to attend regular classes for reasons such as 1) distance-where students live too far from a physical campus to attend regular classes; 2) need for flexibility some students need the flexibility to study at home whenever it is convenient as they are employed.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India is to launch Live Virtual Classes for any student with the objective of providing best professional guidance, that is access lectures on varied subjects by renowned faculty as well as download reversionary test papers, supplementary study material, suggested answers to prepare for exams. The institute knowledge portal will be made available to small and medium practitioners that would give them access to Institute’s publications, industry specific guides and data facilitating the audit of transfer pricing and transactions at a negligible cost. Many virtual Universities are accredited in the same way as traditional universities and operate according to the same academic standards. These universities grant degrees recognized around the world.

Trade agreements

Globalization has become easier and quicker due to liberalization, privatization and the multilateral trade agreements, free trade between preferential sectors and countries or blocks, movement of technically qualified labourers and technicians at different levels in various organizations, even widespread popularization of food of different countries, culture, dress, motor vehicles, electrical and electronic goods, apart from fashion goods. But internationalization of education is to take place slowly. There must be integration of a country’s education with the education offered in foreign universities. Each continent is diverse in terms of languages, creed, communities, socio-economic status etc. These variations are also reflected in the learners group and bring about variations in the cognitive abilities, affect attributes and other attributes and other aspects of learning and personality development.

Heterogeneity of learners also effect the teacher learning situations adversely and divergently. In India Human Resource Development Ministry wants to set up academically and functionally autonomous Universities for innovation to create a new ethos and mode of education as well as have tie-up with Western and Eastern universities in order to give boost to India’s higher education.

Asian universities

The efforts in opening up the country to Western or other Asian universities will not result in globalization of education, as expected but only in identifying and taking away the real potential or talent to create new imperialism of intelligentsia over common average people. In turn there might be a mass exodus of average people who would want to come here for semesters or degrees and ultimately spoil the academic ambiance. India has got the third largest education system in the world next to USA and China. China might be lacking higher educational facilities when compared to India in so far as IT and Computer Applications but equal if not better.

To be continued