'Want to promote India as a destination for affordable education'

As Association of Indian Universities (AIU) completes 100 years, its secretary general Pankaj Mittal spoke to Shradha Chettri about the body's journey, its plan to include autonomous colleges as members, and the challenges being faced in NEP implementation in terms of funding. Edited excerpts from the conversation:

- Shradha Chettri

Q. What has been AIU’s achievement in the past 100 years?

A. AIU is the largest university network in the world. Of the 1,300 universities in the country, 1,100 are members of AIU. The membership comprises central universities, institutes of national importance, state universities, private universities and deemed-to-be universities. If 1,100 are becoming members of AIU despite being voluntary, they see value in it. We do a lot of work in the higher education sector. We engage with leadership, vice chancellors, teachers and students.

In the case of VC's, we hold conferences where a lot of deliberations are held on policy issues. The many recommendations that emerge out of it are shared with the government of India as policy input.

In the case of teachers, after COVID and the introduction of artificial intelligence, it was felt that there were a lot of capacity building requirements, especially on the use of technology and AI for teaching, learning, research and governance. We have opened academic and administrative development centres in various universities where we are training teachers and administrators. With online education getting popular, we have to teach teachers how to create e-content, how to teach in an online ecosystem, student engagement and how to use AI for teaching assistants.

Students are our major stakeholders. We talk about holistic development of students. We do a lot of sports activities at national and international level. We conduct zonal competitions as well. Our students participated in the World University Games last year in China and they won 26 medals. This is an achievement.

Similarly we do a lot of cultural activities. Kapil Mishra of the Kapil Mishra show fame is a product of AIU youth programmes. To inculcate research acumen we do Anweshan, at zonal and national levels. Students submit their research papers and the best one is awarded.