As espoused in the NEP (National Education Policy) 2020, the NCET is set to be conducted for admission into 4-year Integrated Teacher Education Programmes (ITEP) like B.A.-B.Ed/B.Sc-B.Ed/B.Com-B.Ed courses.

Online submission of application forms will be open from 26th June to 19th July 2023 (up to 11:30 pm). The last date for a successful transaction of fee through Credit/Debit Card/Net-Banking/UPI is 19th July 2023 (up to 11:50 pm). Candidates can correct their particulars from 20th July to 21 July 2023 (up to 11:50 pm).

Drawing from the NEP 2020, the NCET 2023 will be conducted in 13 languages: English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

Each paper will be divided into 4 sections: Section 1 is the Languages section, Section 2 is the Domain-specific subjects section, Section 3 is the General Test section, and Section 4 is the Teaching Aptitude section.

For Section 1, candidates have to choose 2 languages as Language 1 and Language 2 from a list of 33 languages. Apart from the 13 languages listed earlier as the medium of examination, the 20 other languages that candidates can choose from are Arabic, Bodo, Chinese, Dogri, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Manipuri, Nepali, Persian, Russian, Santhali, Sindhi, Spanish, Tibetan, and Sanskrit.

Each language will have 20 questions, having a total of 40 questions in that section.

Section 2 will have the choice of 26 Domain-specific subjects, namely Accountancy/Bookkeeping, Agriculture, Anthropology, Biology/Biological Studies/Biotechnology/Biochemistry, Business Studies, Chemistry, Environmental Studies, Computer Science/Informatics Practices, Economics/Business Economics, Engineering Graphics, Entrepreneurship, Fine Arts/Visual Arts(Sculpture/Painting)/ Commercial Art, Geography/ Geology, History, Home Science, Knowledge Tradition-Practices India, Legal Studies, Mass Media/Mass Communication, Mathematics / Applied Mathematics, Performing Arts, Physical Education/National Cadet Corps (NCC)/ Yoga, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Sanskrit, and Sociology.

Candidates will have to choose 3 domain-specific subjects from this list, and each subject will have 25 questions, summing up to a total of 75 questions.

Section 3, or the General Test section will have 25 questions, and Section 4, or the Teaching Aptitude section will have 20 questions. Therefore, the paper will have a total of 160 questions.

The exam will be a Computer-Based Test (CBT), with the questions being Objective-type in Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) format.

The syllabus for the General Test section (Section 3) is: General Knowledge, Current Affairs, General Mental
Ability, Numerical Ability, Quantitative Reasoning, Logical and Analytical Reasoning.

Language for the Language section (Section 1) is to be tested through Reading Comprehension, Literary Aptitude, and Vocabulary.

The syllabus for the Domain-subjects sections (Section 2) is as per the Class 12 syllabus only.

Candidates may access the list of Central/State Universities/Institutions including IITs, NITs, RIEs, and Government Colleges for the Academic Session 2023-24, and other details, at the official website http://ncet.samarth.ac.in/.

The post NCET Online application form for ITEP programmes now LIVE: Direct Link appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended traditional education systems worldwide, forcing educators to rapidly adopt hybrid and online learning solutions. In India, the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) has provided the impetus to reimagine education, with the focus shifting towards a technology-driven, learner-centric approach. One of the most significant outcomes of the policy is the recognitionand promotion of hybrid learning, which combines online and offline modes of education. Hybrid education has the potential to bring about a major transformation in the way India approaches education, making it more accessible and inclusive.

Hybrid learning is a combination of synchronous, asynchronous, physical, and virtual learning. In this new model, the aim is to create deeply individualised, learner-centred experiences for students. The foundation of hybrid learning is made up of four pillars. These include the environment, the pedagogies used during the transfer of knowledge, the partnerships, and the efficient use of digital devices.

Hybrid education provides a flexible and inclusive learning environment, allowing students to learn at their own paceand in a manner that suits their learning styles. This is particularly important in a country like India, where manystudents face challenges like lack of access to educational resources, inadequate infrastructure, and long commutes to school.

The NEP 2020 recognizes the potential of hybrid education to address these challenges and has proposed a number of measures to promote it. The policy emphasizes the need for the development of digital infrastructure and the adoption of digital technologies in education. It also highlights the need for the creation of high-quality, digital educational resources that are accessible to all students. The policy proposes the creation of a National Educational Technology Forum (NETF), which will be responsible for the development of these resources and for promoting the use of digital technologies in education.

Another important aspect of hybrid education is its potential to make education more inclusive. Hybrid education allows students from all over the country, regardless of their geographical location, to access high-quality education. This is particularly important in a country like India, where many students live in rural areas and have limited access to educational resources. Hybrid education can provide these students with access to high-quality educational materialand interactive online classes, enabling them to learn and develop their skills.

The post NEP 2020 and Hybrid Education: A Step Towards Revolutionising India’s Education System appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

University Grants Commission (UGC)’s draft ‘Guidelines for Incorporating Indian Knowledge in Higher Education Curricula’ proposes these initiatives to help colleges and universities to improvise courses and programs based on Indian Knowledge System for students.

The students will have an understanding to how the knowledge of the past can be linked with the contemporary education which will help them find new perspectives to build sustainable human communities. It was introduced as a concept in the NEP 2020.

IKS can be defined as a body of systematized disciplines of knowledge developed to a high degree of sophistication from ancient times and of all traditions and practices that various communities of India, including the tribal communities of India have practiced, , evolved and preserved for generations.

Every student is required to take credit courses in IKS, which at least amounts to 5 percent of their total mandate courses. It is only a student is able to obtain a degree. The 50% of the total credits for IKS must be related to a major and is also to be accounted to that particular major discipline.  That is, if a student who pursues BSc in science with Maths as his/her major, then he or she is required to take up a course related to IKS. In this case, it might be ‘numbers, fractions, and geometry in Vedas’.

For students who pursue modern medicine, a credit course has been proposed in the first year by the UGC and a two semester credit course on ‘theory and practice’ of Naturopathy, Ayurveda, Siddha, Homeopathy, Yoga, and Unani.

“ancient records of the observation of the motion  of celestial bodies in the Vedic corpus”, “ astronomy as the science of determination of time” , “place and direction by observing the motion of the celestial bodies” are some of the suggested courses by UGC in the field of astronomy. The other courses suggested as per the guide lines include “Splendid geographical isolation of India and the uniqueness of Indian culture”, “Ramayana and Mahabharata, and their important regional versions”, “Puranas”, Foundational texts of Indian Philosophies”, including the “Jaina and Bauddha”, and “foundational texts of Indian religious sampradayas, from the Vedic period to the Bhakti traditions of different regions”.

UGC has made the draft public to receive feedback till April 30. It has also has also sent the guidelines to universities and colleges for their suggestions.

The post UGC suggests including Indian Knowledge System courses in UG and PG programs appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

What are your thoughts on National Education Policy 2020 and the possible impact on management education?

There are three aspects about the National Education Policy (NEP). The first and foremost is the freedom it provides to the student to pick and choose, mix and match different classes from different institutions. In that respect, it reduces the regimentation of the governing bodies such as UGC and AICTE.

The second major aspect is to encourage digital education in order to make education more accessible and affordable. In other words, there is democratization of higher education. Finally, it encourages top foreign universities to hub in India so that Indian students don’t have to go abroad to get world class education and experience.

The third aspect is to mandate that single discipline institutes and colleges, especially in engineering and management, must become multidisciplinary universities. This is similar to the evolution of Carnegie Mellon and Caltech from engineering to full-fledged multidisciplinary universities. Similarly, Wharton School, Bentley College, and Georgia State, which began as commerce colleges, became full-fledged universities.

The implications for management education will be enormous. First, digital education will generate a much larger reach of qualified students who otherwise cannot come to the campus. Second, the core courses such as economics, behavioral sciences, accounting, finance, and marketing can be taught by a single professor across multiple campuses simultaneously. This will alleviate the shortage of faculty. For example, an IIM faculty in Bangalore can offer the class online to all IIM students across several IIMs. Similarly, for non-government institutes such as ISB, XLRI, JAGSOM, and SPJIMR.

Finally, management education can become more specialized by adding “know how” to “know why”. The experiential component is key to management education; just as it is in medical schools and in engineering.

How do you plan to align with NEP?

There are several ways one can align the stand alone discipline based institutes or management schools. First, they can become universities by adding additional schools such as law, economics, and information sciences. Second, there may be a consortium of institutes and colleges each with different specializations. For example, a good engineering college can partner with a good management institute for the undergraduate programs. Similarly, a good liberal arts college can collaborate with a good business school. Third, a good business school may link with a foreign university but with different disciplines such as public health, agriculture, and social sciences. My new National Education Policy (NEP) offers the flexibility and freedom to become more innovative in cross disciplinary collaborations.

What is the significance of upskilling in today’s time, and how will it change the future of the work system?

There are two reasons why upskilling is key to the future of education. First, we are producing smart products and services. This requires smart technicians and smart customer support centers. Today’s automobile is literally a mobile computer requiring a skilled technician. It is becoming a new reality across cell phones, banking, and even retail stores.

Second, digital technology is becoming more affordable with smartphones, Internet, and cloud computing. This will encourage more automation. The capital expenses are becoming more operating expenses. There will be greater automation of jobs where highly hazardous jobs such as sewage tanks and oil tanks will be automated. So will be low wage jobs which the machines can do better, faster, and cheaper. The future of work will be technology enabled skilled workforce. It will make greater use of the brain and less use of the brawn (physical labor).

How has business and management education reshaped over the years?

Biggest change in management education over 50 years is the student composition. The MBA degree was designed for undergraduate engineers to learn the vocabulary and concepts of management by adding two years of graduate education in management. It is the typical IIT-IIM combination. Today, most good universities require some work experience after graduation before they are admitted to a management degree or diploma. Also, today more students are enrolling in management education who are not engineers. They are diverse in their undergraduate degrees ranging from history, music, sociology, psychology, and fine arts.

Finally, and most significantly, many MBA students are working professionals who study in the evenings and on weekends. They enroll in evening MBA or executive MBA programs. With distant learning and digital technology, this segment is growing significantly. The campus comes to the student and it is not limited to degree programs but also extended to non-degree executive education consisting of certificates and digital badges.

The second major change is that the half life of knowledge is declining rapidly. It is down to 18 months similar to what is happening in sciences and software. This challenges the notion of a terminal degree.

B-schools across the globe are being criticized for their limited impact on real-world management practices and limited academic research. What are your views on the same?

Business education was founded on the social sciences model instead of medical and engineering sciences. Furthermore, to become more legitimate they became more scientific by adding quantitative and experimental methods. While the “rigor” went up, the “relevance” suffered. At the same time, the real world changed dramatically especially after the first energy crisis of the late seventies, liberalization of trade in the nineties, collapse of communism, rise of China and India as large consumer markets, and finally the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

The textbooks lagged behind in their updates. The gap between the real world widened and management knowledge in many disciplines became legacies. This was further compounded by computerization and digital transformation of enterprises. No one really saw the massive impact of social media such as Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp. There was no internet until very recently and eCommerce was nascent.

There are several ways management education is adapting to make it more relevant. First, publishers are now online and real time. There is democratization of information and knowledge. Google is a bigger library than the Library of Congress. Digital storage is cheaper than paper.

Second, we are updating the courses more frequently by bringing the real world knowledge as a supplement to the textbook. Finally, we are making management more experiential similar to medicine, agriculture, engineering, and other professional schools.

What are the advantages and shortcomings of Indian Management Education as it stands today, and how can we become more relevant to the needs of stakeholders?

In education there are two components: selection and development. The main advantage of the Indian Management Education is the selection of students. And the selection process is by and large anchored to merit at IIMs and other private schools. The applicant pool is large, and the management institutes have the luxury of choosing the brightest and the best. What we need to improve is in development. How do you polish that rough diamond so that she or he becomes a good citizen and serves the nation in addition to delivering profits and growth? We had a more developmental approach to unlocking the potential of the students.

The post Biggest change in management education over 50 years is student composition appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

Key Components of NEP:

Creative combination of subjects without stiff demarcations between vocational & academic streams, a seamless integration of vocational studies, the 4-year multidisciplinary degrees with entry & exit options, capitalizing on modern technology, Creating capabilities for Online Learning, allowing foreign universities to set up in India and all these setting the right synergies envisioned towards India emerging as the “Vishwa Guru”, the knowledge Superpower.

Emergence of a Vibrant Institutional Architecture:

The upcoming Education Ecosystem would witness the disruptive innovation with promising inclusions to deliver a variety of customized skill-based courses to match up to the dynamic industry requirements. This transformation would be fueled by the following policy ingredients:

• Elevate the Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher studies from 26.3% (2018) to 50% by 2035. It is projected to add 3.5 Crore new seats to HEIs.
• 4-year multidisciplinary degrees with entry & exit options with an Academic Bank for credits for the final degree.

The aforesaid inclusions paired with flexibility in subject combinations would work at building the desired skills set. We had silo formats, where each course was confined to a specific discipline & was missing the understanding of the real scenarios. A Civil Engineer, aspiring to bloom into an entrepreneur, needs to understand the complexities of Accounts for a successful establishment. The multi-disciplinary approach would surely take us in the desired growth trajectory in the coming years.

Education Framework driven by Digitization:

The policy aims to create a framework embedded with digital infrastructure and technology advancements to provide today’s youth an access to quality learning. The online education is proving its mettle and is consistently driving knowledge management initiative and leveraging learning platforms for blended learning.

The comprehensive set of initiatives such as creating a digital infrastructure, E-Learning modules, Online courses in academics & vocational education, are aiming to create a future ready youth. An important introduction of “Coding” as an Essential Skill from Class VI onwards is a very progressive and welcoming inclusion. This would surely result into skilled manpower eligible for Job Opportunities Worldwide.

Global Platform of Educational Equivalence:

The NEP has announced radical modifications in UG & PG Programs wherein Students at the UG level can pursue the degrees of both 3 or 4 years with multiple exit and entry options and at the Master’s Level, can choose from 1 year & 2 Year PG Degrees.

The earlier rigidity of 2 years PG formula denied recognition to the 1-year Master’s that the Indians & students from abroad came with, aspiring for Jobs or other educational avenues in India. With current choice, the Indian Degrees would now be at par with Foreign Universities. It is indeed a welcome move for professionals, who desire to attain Degree in Master’s. The new flexibilities would open two-way possibilities on both the Educational front & Jobs opportunities Worldwide.

Internationalization of Higher Education- Promoting Global Competitiveness:

The policy has introduced a progressive inclusion that allows Top 100 Universities in the world to set operations in India. We might start reaping the benefits from initiatives that are likely to launch in short term with this facilitation such as co-development of newer courses, a variety of Virtual Classrooms, Global Immersion programs, Research collaboration and an enhancement in the quality of Indian education & research with Global Competitiveness.

A Defined Move to Create the “Atma Nirbhar Bharat”: The NEP is focused towards providing today’s youth an access to high quality learning & development through a consolidated framework of Academics & experiential applications, to prepare them thoroughly for progressive opportunities. It promises to create the new age skills for students with a higher eligibility of availing the desired roles in vast arena of Job Opportunities. The entire process of implementing the framework is bound to create the linked employment into the system as it would positively expose the Indian population to the newer avenues in the Education Industry.

The post ITM Group of Institutions_The NEP will bring rise in demand for tailored courses_HigherEducationMagazine appeared first on Higher Education Plus.

The post NEP and education for the future appeared first on Higher Education Plus.