XLRI- Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur organized an Interactive Session with Prof. Anil D Sahasrabudhe, 
Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). The topic of the session was “The Future of Higher Education in India-Management Education in India”.
The session was attended by Fr. E. Abraham S.J., Director, Dr. Ashis K Pani, Dean (Academics) along with all other faculty members and students of XLRI.
Welcoming the AICTE Chairman, Fr. E. Abraham S.J., Director, XLRI said, “We are extremely privileged to have in our midst today Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe. I have interacted with many Chairmen of AICTE since last several years; however I have found Prof Sahasrabudhe as the most approachable and sympathetic to the PGDM institutions. Whenever we approached him, he listened to our problems and asked for our suggestions to solve them. Recently he found an amicable solution to the 2010 circular which almost took away the autonomy of the PGDM Schools. Not only that he has taken several initiatives to improve technical and management education in the country.”
Addressing the session, Prof. Anil D Sahasrabudhe said, “Education should be the manifestation of excellence and an academic curriculum alone is not enough. There should be enough of co-curricular activity in academic institutes to provide holistic development of students. Education should be output based and not input based. A good infrastructure, laboratories, libraries are part of the input. However, an out-based education is where focus is on student achievement after undergoing the course, recruitment of distinguished set of faculty members and an institute having a well-defined vision and values to guide its curriculum. Students should have a social outlook and be sensitized to the prevailing problems and demands of the society. Life skills like team work, time management are important traits.”
Highlighting his ideas about future managers and management education in India, Prof. Sahasrabudhe said, “Managers should look beyond business and profit. They should be imbibed with moral and ethical values. Hence ethics course should be a compulsory component of the curriculum. It is one thing to know ethics and another to practice. Therefore institutes must take special care into appointing the right faculty to take up the course. So that students can look upto them and hold them as mentors.”
He further added, “Managers cannot be followers, but they have to be leaders. They must assert themselves in giving back to the society. Being innovative and thinking out-of-the-box is the key thing. We need management graduates to be a blend of managers, leaders and entrepreneurs.”
He stressed on opportunities prevailing in India’s unorganized sector. Students must find ways to create job opportunities in small and medium-scale industries and thus tap the unused resources. A breakthrough in future is possible if more management graduates turn to rural sector and create job opportunities for the society. Sectors like dairy, poultry, agriculture, horticulture should also be seen as significant entrepreneurial ventures.”
He highlighted AICTE’s initiative called Marg Darshan or Mentorship wherein faculty from institutes struggling to achieve standards of excellence are invited to the cream institutes to observe their teaching policies and methodology. And then implement similar policies back in their institutes. This practice of competition and collaboration can help in expanding the quality of education beyond the 100 best B-schools. On the occasion, he also talked about the initiatives undertaken by the MHRD department to accelerate the future of education in India. Initiatives like smart India Hackathon to encourage innovation, National Academic Depository for online availability of all academic certificates and degrees, Study in India to attract foreign students to the country are all steps taken towards reforming and improving the education system of the country. Speaking about quality of teachers, Prof. Sahasrabudhe highlighted the 8-module teacher training programme initiated by MHRD. The initiative is undertaken to increase the number of good teachers across the board.
Responding to the queries of XLRI students regarding the IIM Act, Prof. Sahasrabudhe said that all the PGDM courses are on equal footing with the MBA course provided by the IIMs. Addressing the students’ queries on encouraging innovative thinking in school level itself, the AICTE Chairman talked about the new education policy suggested by the Kasturi Rangan Committee. He said “The out-of-the-box thinking should be encouraged in students at school level itself and not only in higher education.” He also talked about tinkering labs that are being set-up in schools to promote innovation and free thinking in students.
Dr. Ashis K Pani, Dean (Academics), XLRI thanked the AICTE Chairman for his time and his insightful interaction with the students of XLRI. On the lines of the Smart India Hackathon, Dr. Pani suggested that MHRD could
