Kozhikode: Private sector's involvement, albeit with "social control", should be ensured for the educational growth of Kerala, said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
"The government is not the only one that plays a role in the education sector. The sector grew through the activities of Christian missionaries in Kerala. The state has aided institutions at all levels of education. That is also the private sector," he said, and added: "It is important that our standards are significantly improved."
He was responding to questions from students at the 'Face to Face with Chief Minister' programme at Malabar Christian College grounds on Sunday, February 18.
The Chief Minister said the government has planned to develop 30 centers of excellence.
R A Adarsh, a first-year Botany undergraduate student at Velu Thampi Memorial NSS College at Dhanuvachapuram in Thiruvananthapuram, told the Chief Minister that Kerala was losing precious human resources when students going abroad for education find jobs and settle there. He suggested changes in higher education that will help educated youths to find jobs in Kerala itself.
Adarsh has been sending money to the Chief Minister's Disaster Relief Fund every month since 2016, when he was in Class V. The Chief Minister invited him and gave him a letter of commendation after coming to know of his steady contribution.
Only Kerala stood by us, says Manipur student
Students from Manipur praised Kerala for reaching out to them when ethnic strife hit the state. "When riots broke out, the Manipur Students' Union contacted many states to help students continue their education. Only Kerala stood by us," said Goulungmon Haokip (25), a Kuki student pursuing an LLB at Kannur University. He said 100 students from Manipur are pursuing higher education in Kerala, and 46 of them are in Kannur University.
Responding to Haokip, the Chief Minister said that Kerala is the only state in the country where there have been no communal conflicts and riots for several years.
Overhauling higher education
The face of arts and science colleges will change with the introduction of the four-year undergraduate programme in the next academic year, Pinarayi said.
The course reform will be such that students will get credits for participating in arts and sports. Achievers will get grace marks, too, he said. "A completely student-centric change is being implemented," he said.
The state government had been spending a lot of money on research and 176 persons had received the Chief Minister's Nava Kerala Post Doctoral Fellowship. This is apart from the other scholarships. No other state in India provides scholarships to so many people in the field of higher education, he said. "The money spent in the field of research is not seen as an expense but as an investment for the future," Piarayi said.
But he prodded students to come up with solutions to why Kerala was lagging in world-class research. "There are Malayalis in important roles in the research team of Nobel laureates. But we are not able to achieve in-house excellence," he said. "We should think about this seriously and suggest solutions," he said.
He urged more medical doctors to take up research. "It will make a big difference. Efforts have already started to create an eco-system for biomedical research in medical colleges," he said.
Minister for Higher Education R Bindu presided over the interactive event. Ministers P A Muhammed Riyas, A K Saseendran, Calicut University Vice Chancellor Prof M K Jayaraj, Kerala University of Digital Sciences, Innovation and Technology Vice Chancellor Prof Saji Gopinath, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit as Vice-Chancellor Prof M V Narayanan, Cusat Vice Chancellor Prof P G Sankaran, Sree Narayana Guru Open University Vice Chancellor P M Mubarak Pasha and Chief Secretary P Venu shared the dias with the Chief Minister.
Prof Mohanan Kunnummal, Vice Chancellor of Kerala University of Health Sciences and Vice Chancellor in charge of the University of Kerala, and Prof S Bijoy Nandan, Vice-Chancellor in charge of Kannur University, were notably absent from the Chief Minister's high-profile event.
The government has planned 10 such interactive sessions with various sections of people as a continuation of the Nava Kerala Sadas, where the Chief Minister did not interact with common people.
Pinarayi would next meet youths at Uday Palace Convention Centre in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday (February 20).
