How Indian Universities Can Benefit
Indian universities have the potential to be institutions like Arizona State University, tells a pioneer of online education at the FICCI Higher Education Summit 2021 focused on resilience, innovation, sustainability, and enterprise.
Professor Michael Crow, President, Arizona State University (ASU), was the keynote speaker at FICCI Higher Education Summit 2021. During the interactive session on ‘Online Higher Education: Changing Imperatives’, on day two of the summit, Professor Crow spoke about similarities between India and the United States and highlighted how Indian universities have the potential to become inclusive institutions like ASU.
Professor Crow is known as the pioneer of online education. Much before the pandemic forced schools and universities to move online, he had created a tech enhanced learning environment at ASU. His decision to begin offering classes online came from the realisation that many students with potential were not able to get the opportunity to pursue higher education. He wanted to include a more diverse group of students cutting across culture, socioeconomic status, and nationality. Online education presented a new path to achieve that goal. ‘Both India and the United States have large and diverse groups of students who want to attend college but are unable to for different reasons. We tried scaling the existing traditional systems, but that will not work if we want to include more students. India, the world’s largest democracy, has unbelievably significant potential and a pool of gifted people across areas. I see a huge opportunity for partnerships and working together to reach out and include more students through online platforms,’ observed Professor Crow while talking about possible collaborations with Indian universities.
The FICCI Higher Education Summit 2021 focused on resilience, innovation, sustainability, and enterprise. The conferences organized by FICCI this year concentrated on insights on policy roadmap and current issues in higher education around the world. The objective: highlight online and distant learning, since the pandemic has caused almost every educational institute to move to the internet. Professor Crow has extensive experience in creating an adaptive online learning environment, and he was invited to speak more about this shift to online education for higher classes. “We measure our success not by whom we exclude, but by whom we include and how they succeed. The success of the university is measured by the success of the students. We are approaching 150,000 degree-seeking students now, and they completely represent the socioeconomic diversity of our society.
We believe that a part of our existence is to take fundamental responsibility for the communities we serve, their economic development, social development, health, and well-being. For instance, we invented a high-speed robot-driven, saliva-based PCR test for COVID. We deployed that and used that within the university community, and now it has become one of the main tools in our state. We’ve tested more than 700,000 people,” he says.