HED - Interior Design Special

INDIA EDITION Connecta

MUST-WATCH INTERIOR DESIGN INSTITUTES IN INDIA

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JAIPUR

When the Indian Urban Design Education Goes ‘Glocal’

Dr. Deepika Shetty, Director, Manipal School of Architecture & Planning

The Future of Design Education in India Alex Velasco, Dean - School of Design, Pearl Academy

MARCH 2020

THE MELTING POT OF CREATIVITY AND LOGIC

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

Connecta

March 2020

Vol - 2 Issue - 3

Interior Design Institutes Special (India Edition) Editor in Chief

Dr. Manoj Varghese

Managing Editor Sarath Shyam

Consultant Editors

Dr. Johny Andrews Anjana K Shyam S

Navya Venkatesh Stanly Lui Emma James

Editorial Enquiry: editor@highereducationdigest.com

Art and Design Ajay K Das

Sales & Marketing

Jyoti Kumari Prathyoosh K Shaji

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Arati Waghmare Rupali Mohankar

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Higher Education Digest March 2019 2020

MANAGING EDITOR’S NOTE

The Era of Smart Designers

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henever I am in my living room, watching TV or reading a book, I would call my mom, only to ask her to switch on the fan. She will do it most of the time, though I might have to see her red face for couple of seconds for interrupting her while she was cooking. Those were the old days. I don’t do that now. Instead, I would say, “Hey Alexa, please switch on the fan in my living room.” Here it is, the fan starts, I am happy, and my mom’s work goes on uninterrupted.

Today, smart homes grown beyond being a mere opportunity for homeowners to show off to their neighbors and friends. Smart homes come with a fantastic array of advantages, allowing us to tap into high-tech conveniences that make our life

5 more enjoyable. With the inclusion of technologies like IoT, designers are on an experiment spree. They are not only trying to become creative but also being smart to match with the expectations of modern-day tech savvy customers.

In this issue of Higher Education Digest, we have handpicked “10 Must-Watch Interior Design Institutes in India” that are making aspiring interior designers smart, creative and efficient to work for the future generation of consumers. On the cover, we feature Department of Interior Design at Manipal University Jaipur that believes in increasing the overall spectrum for students with more practical knowledge and options in the design world.

Enjoy Reading.

Sarath Shyam

Higher Education Digest March 2020

ADVISORY BOARD Dr. Kuldeep Nagi, Ph.D, MBA, BSc. Program Director of Ph.D, Recipient of Fulbright Fellowship Award & Dan Evans Award for Excellence and Writer columnist.

Dr.Varughese K.John, PhD, MBA, MPhil, MCom, LLB. Program Director, MS in Management Program, GSATM - AU

Dr. Venus M. Alboruto, PhD, Master Teacher, Researcher, Innovator, Trainer.

6 Major General (Rtd.) Dr. Sunil Chandra, VSM (Vishishta Seva Medal), Ph.D, M. Phil, MA, M.Ed, PGBDA Ex-M D Army Welfare Education Society, ExCOO GEMS Education - India, Ex- Addl Dir Gen - Army Education, Mentor - Adventure-Pulse

Dr. Ajay Shukla, Ph.D, MBA, BE.

Mr. Sreedhar Bevara, MBA, B.Com

Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Higher Education UAE

Senior General Manager: Panasonic Middle East & Africa, Thought Leader, Speaker & Author of ‘Moment of Signal’ (Amazon’s International Bestseller)

Mr. Amulya Sah, PGD PM & IR, PG Diploma in PM&IR (XISS Ranchi)

Shanthi Rajan (MSHRM, FHEA, AMCILT) Director, Institution Development, University of Stirling, RAK Campus, UAE.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Senior Director HR. Head HR group Samsung R&D Institute India,Transformative HR Leader, Change agent, Digitization facilitator, Engagement architect, Trainer and Diversity champion.

Asst. Prof. Dr. Suramya Mathai, Ph.D,M.Ed,MA,BA. Teachers Training Expert, Writer, Author, Speaker & Social Worker

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

CONT

ACADEMIC VIEW

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

38 - 41 When the Indian Urban Design Education Goes ‘Glocal’ Dr. Deepika Shetty

50 - 54 The Future of Design Education in India Alex Velasco, Dean - School of Design, Pearl Academy

56 - 59 Technology Enabling Trends in Higher Education Dr. Kulneet Suri, Senior Director, Institute of Management Studies (IMS) Noida

16 - 20

32 - 36

ACCA: Providing a Gateway to Financial Prosperity

Entrepreneurship: The Art of Learning from Mistakes

Helen Brand, CEO, ACCA

Sahil Vaidya, Co-Founder, The Minimalist

MANIPAL UNIVERSITY JAIPUR

THE MELTING

POT OF CREATIVITY AND LOGIC

ENTS STUDY ABROAD

MENTOR’S MANTRA

68 - 70

10 - 14

How new policies are promoting education in Regional Australia

Design Institutions Need to Reevaluate the Way Design Education Delivered Currently

Rohit Sethi, Director, ESS Global-Study Abroad Consultant

Mookesh Patel, Design Education Consultant and Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University

46 - 49 DAYANAND COLLEGE OF INTERIOR DESIGN

Training Creative Minds to be Future-Ready

60 - 66 JECRC UNIVERSITY’S SCHOOL OF DESIGN

Pushing the Frontiers of Interior Designing

MENTOR’S MANTRA

Design Institutions Need to Reevaluate the Way Design Education Delivered Currently Mookesh Patel, Design Education Consultant and Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University

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e are busier than ever with little or no time for our children, parents or grandparents. We prefer to eat unhealthy meals at a restaurant and less inclined for a healthy home cooked meal with family. We desire to live and work in an unsustainable atmosphere. We waste resources and have little respect for the environment. Design must be inclusive and not exclusive.

Unfathomable technological advances have influenced our design capabilities. Is design driving technology or is technology driving design is the big question. Until designers are willing to comprehend the driving force — data — and integrate data analysis as a large part of their design processes focused on the wellbeing of the population at large, technology will continue driving design for the benefit of the wealthy few. Hence, it is the responsibility of all design institutions to reevaluate the way design education delivered currently.

Global Perspective Internationally, design education is being questioned and its value and validity investigated. The design industry is transforming rapidly and feels that the universities and design schools are far behind the curve. As tuition costs are significantly high, the students begin to wonder about the return on their investment (ROI). (Unlike India, students in the developed nations borrow funds from financial institutions or government institutions to furnish their education.)

The design industry looks for adequate soft skills besides the design skills. However, most design schools do not focus on soft skills and positioned only to deliver traditional design skills that have roots in mid twentieth century. The dilemma for the design academicians is choosing the right avenue. One avenue emphasizes the importance of education in terms of employment preparedness. The other avenue focuses on building a foundation for adaption in this technologically driven world.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Design as a noun is temporary.

Design as a verb is constant and evolving

11 Mookesh Patel

Prof. Mookesh Patel has been the Chair of Visual Communication at Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University – ranked in the Top 5 design schools in the United States of America. He received his MFA in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design and holds a diploma in Visual Communication from the National Institute of Design.

He is the recipient of a Fullbright Research Scholar Grant, United Nations Development Program Grant, and other awards. A highly experienced design education guru, Prof. Patel enjoys teaching and developing student-centered learning environments

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Is the role of design education to tailor the growing economic needs or is it to nurture a tenacious mindset for a healthy world?

In recent TEDTalk, Eduardo Briceño grieved over the time spent by design professionals at the best of their abilities — a state of the Performance Zone wherein there is no scope for failure for the sake of the return of the investment. Hence, it is also the Comfort Zone wherein there is no risk taking — a critical ingredient for innovation and concern for a healthy world.

On the other hand, students at a design school have a chance to be in the Learning Zone. They enjoy the time and space to experiment, fail until they succeed and discover their own Zone with immense possibilities and opportunities. Their new-found Zone may be adequately comfortable to adapt in the technologically transforming and environmentally challenged world.

Design as a noun is temporary. Design as a verb is constant and evolving.

Global design trends continue unwavering focus on economic gains. India has done well, and the economic growth is immense. Ironically, students and parents can now afford expensive private design schools and these graduates may also continue to concentrate on further economic gains. It is by no means a bad scenario. However, what we internationally lack is the desirable balance of economic growth and an equal or greater concern for our fellow beings, animals, birds, insects, environment and overall wellbeing.

India has a different set of challenges than the developed world. Design education in the developed world is systemic. Most design institutions secure accreditation (every three to five years) through a national agency (such as the National Association of Schools of Art and Design — NASAD in the US) and are required to strictly adhere to the rules and regulations. Full time faculty members are hired through a rigorous process and are highly qualified.

Students exercise their free will in selecting an institute that serves their disciplinary interests and fund their own education. Hence, they are motivated to perform well in their respective studies.

Students in the developed nations are not alien to the concept of receiving a failing grade if they do not perform well. They pay by the credit hours for the class they opt to study and thus it is affordable to retake the class if they fail.

There is little interference from their parents and the sole responsibility to succeed is always on the shoulders of the student. Students work hard and secure their own future as design institutions do not guarantee any placement upon their graduation.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Mookesh Patel

The design industry is transforming rapidly and feels that the universities and design schools are far behind the curve

Most design institutions are well equipped with infrastructure and facilities. Students are able to access design labs and studios anytime they wish. At times they are able to consult with their respective faculty members and mentors beyond regular class and office hours as the faculty members too are working on their individual research projects in the same design labs and studios. On an average, faculty members are required to devote 40% of their time on teaching, 40% on their individual publishable research and 20% on institutional service.

The challenge that these institutions in the developed nations face is to keep the curriculum relevant considering the advancement in technology and the economic growth.

Indian design institutions still lack the appropriate systems, infrastructure and facilities. In most private design institutions faculty members are not required to conduct any research. They are randomly hired at the last minute based on institutional needs. Considerable number of faculty members are not qualified to teach as they do not have a graduate and/or postgraduate degree from a reputed institution, nor do they have adequate professional experience.

Entrance exams at most private institutions are questionable. The prime motivation for these institutions is to enroll a large number of students and hence the process is meaningless. This approach leads to design studios filled with more than 25 students. It is impossible for any studio faculty to interact productively with so many students in a design studio. The curriculum is mostly unstructured and poorly delivered if at all. A large number of these design institutions are not governed by any national or international regulatory body.

Grades (as a measure of performance) are meaningless at these private design institutions. Students are guaranteed to graduate in four years and subsequent industry placement also promised. No wonder there is significantly low attendance record in the design classrooms across the board and subsequently below par performance and expertise.

Making Multi-Disciplinary Thinkers Design is multi-disciplinary in its nature to begin with.

Irrespective of the design discipline, any design project will involve aspects of science, engineering, programming, fine arts, psychology, commerce and many others. Most design schools continue to work within the studiobased environment with a faculty member enacting as a client. Students go through ideation and prototyping phases. Through the process of trial and error, they assume the success of a hypothetical project based on the

Higher Education Digest March 2020

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Traditional design facilitators must keep themselves up to date with technology and design research

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implementation of their creative, aesthetic and technical expertise. Student and faculty alike wear the hats of various experts without much endorsement by real experts.

Thus, the effectiveness of their design solutions is not realized. Involvement of students in a project from other than design disciples legitimately address the unresolved and unanswered questions and fosters creative, unexpected and innovative results.

As pointed out earlier, few public as well as most private institutes are not equipped to house multi disciplines under one roof. Thus, it is difficult to nurture the multidisciplinary creative environment necessary to educate creative and imaginative multi-disciplinary thinkers.

From that perspective, universities are better suited for design education. Various disciplines reside under one roof and faculty members frequently collaborate on their own research projects providing opportunities for students to work with them on real world projects. In my experience, creativity and imagination rise to a much higher level when students and faculty members from various disciples work together on a single project.

Teaching Challenges Though the growth in design education is encouraging, lack of adequate and qualified faculty members is discouraging.

Most designers with excellent portfolio, soft skills and work ethics have no difficulty in securing lucrative industry jobs. However, industry unemployed designers seek to teach design. As the number of academic design programs increase, these designers wanting to teach easily find teaching positions and have no difficulty in securing a permanent place at these newborn design institutions.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

As these designers with less than excellent portfolios, inadequate soft skills and undesirable work ethics begin to teach, they prepare even less appropriate graduates.

CII India Design Report 2015 mentions that 50% of the design industry representatives were not very satisfied with current graduates.

Traditional design facilitators must keep themselves up to date with technology and design research.

Comprehending the role that digital data plays in design development is the key to future design successes. Their rigorous design research must include data analytics.

Integration of new technologies in their pedagogy and curriculum is unavoidable and must not be resisted.

Wise Words for Students Current era driven by technology make the design profession much more lucrative and therefore attractive compared with other professional disciplines. However, design students must be clear in their minds of what kind of a designer they would like to be. Design for commerce or design for wellbeing. Both avenues will demand creativity and imagination coupled with full understanding of how digital data works. Future designers will need to know how to analyze data and appropriately code to realize their projects regionally, nationally and internationally.

If a student is not interested in understanding systems and how they work, then design may not be for her or him.

Future designers will have to broaden their horizons by learning skills from other than design disciplines to make themselves valuable within a collaborative environment.

(As told to Sarath Shyam)

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

ACCA: Providing a Gateway to Financial Prosperity Helen Brand is the Chief Executive of The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), since September 2008. On her recent visit to India, we caught up with Helen Brand to talk about the 20 trends transforming employability in the upcoming decade and the skills that current and aspiring professionals need to hone to stay relevant.

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• Can you tell me a bit about ACCA and how ACCA can support Indian Professionals?

ACCA is a global body of professional accountants, we have over 219 thousand members and 527 thousand students in 179 countries around the world. We originated in the UK in 1904 and very quickly grew globally, probably because of our history of inclusivity and innovation which remain as our founding principles because, in 1904, people essentially needed to be from rich and wealthy families to become an accountant. Our founding fathers believed that anybody with ability should by examination and experience become professional accountants, prove you worth, and if you have ambition and ability. And that’s what we very much believe now, we should not put artificial barriers in the way of people’s success.

We were the first body to have women members, female presidents, we opened qualifications globally for them too. The reason we can work globally is the finance function in any business is key to success. As we have international financial reporting and auditing standards, there is a framework to outbreak globally as a profession.

At the heart of everything we do, we talk about delivering public value, so for us, that means working in the public interest, supporting ethical business practices, and generating sustainable economic growth and if there is a profession where we can do that, then we are delivering public value.

Now in the Indian context, I think it is all about sustainability and inclusivity, so that the very exciting and dynamic economy in India there is, grows in a way that is sustainable and inclusive in population and the benefits of the growth and wealth. So we train professional accountants to think about all those issues, not simply the bottom line, profit motive, which might have been the only thing that you would associate with finance and accounting. We’re looking at societal impact, environmental impact, and how business and organizations accounts them in their reports.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Digital is a great enabler of education

17 Helen Brand

Helen Brand, CEO of ACCA, has built her career within professional bodies and has considerable experience and knowledge of the 180 markets in which ACCA currently operates. She is a founding member of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and now sits as Vice-Chair on the IIRC Board. She is also a member of the University of Exeter Business School International Advisory Board and a member of the Deakin University Business School International Advisory Board. One of the few women to lead a global professional body, Helen is a regular media commentator on the role of ethics and the delivery of public value play in business and society.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Ethics is the heart of being professional and doing the right thing generates trust and confidence Helen Brand

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• There has been a lot of transformations happening due to technological advancements, can you tell me about those transformations and how it is important for people to upskill professionally to learn about what is new in the market?

One thing is certain is that of course, the accounts profession has adapted to new technology over many decades, it is not the current digital wave, so whether it was having a calculator or a computer, we have seen this evolution over time. Now, the more routine repetitive work has been taken over by computers and machines and that’s true in the current environment.

So what was seen by in the careers that the entourage might be different, but the value this added to the role in the finance profession moved up the chain and ACCA did a big research report on Generation Z and what they are expecting from the world of work. Certainly, they see digital is as providing opportunities and not as a threat, an opportunity to meet more interesting people, to do your work more effectively and have a greater impact.

The big differentiation in this wave is data, the digital transformational technology is producing much more data much more rapidly and the ability to analyze that data. So that’s where professional accountants would

Higher Education Digest March 2020

come into the picture, be they auditors in business, in the government sector, the insight they will be able to create from that data will help them to make better decisions to drive the organization more strategically. So, we see that educating and training professional accountants with that data analytical ability digital mindset is going to be quite easy. I think, certainly the digital mindset lets you apply to any profession or role because that’s just the environment and reality we live in.

• With everything going digital, how does ACCA reach out to the youth, i.e., the millennials and GenZ? Digital is a great enabler of education and that is a very important fact. I think the technology being applied to learning and skills development are much more creative and interactive than before. So is reaching a global audience, we can deliver quite a lot of interactive and highly valuable education through digital channels.

At different times of your career, you need to emphasize those aspects more than others, you will need all of them at the base. When you are going to be a leader, you need to showcase that Vision quotient more than when you were a junior person of the organization. We equip them to up those quotients.

• How are the members of ACCA are standing apart from their competition in the Financial Industry?

Well, I think we take great pride in our tagline, “Think Ahead”. And I think probably what we are trying to convey with this is that forward-looking mindset that helps in continuous learning and developing.

We also have a very broad qualification that covers all aspects of accounting and finance, so even if our members specialize in something, they have a broad understanding of the basics. Employers always comment that our members are commercially aware, so they apply their knowledge and that is a huge part of what we do is that, in creating learning professionals, we are market-driven. We listen to employers, so it is not academics with a towel over the head kind of, inventing something that seems clever. It is more about including what employers say they need to succeed in their business. So, our members should facilitate business success and ultimately become business leaders themselves.

Our members are very entrepreneurial. They set up or wish to set up their own businesses. I think that’s the important aspect to these qualifications now is that the foundation for a business is a career, it’s the foundation to make your own business successful as well. We know that startups and small businesses are at the end journey of economic growth, But if you have the financial acumen and if you can plan for your business, you stand a 100% chance of being successful. So, many of our younger members, in fact, over 8% of the 19,000 respondents to our GenX, said they wanted to start their own business during their career as that will generate the wealth and sustainability that we need.

• Many times the younger generation doesn’t know what is wrong and right. What is your take on that? And in your courses, how do you teach the younger generation, the GenZ, about what is right and wrong and ethics?

Ethics is the heart of being professional and doing the right thing generates trust and confidence and that’s what you need to generate. Either within your organization or for investors or stakeholders more widely. Ethics runs throughout our education from day one. So, when somebody signs up with ACCA, just as a student, they sign to a code of ethics and that they will abide by the professional code of ethics. And then we have ethical considerations built into the syllabus.

But most importantly, we have our Ethics and Professional Skills module, which is one of the three pillars of qualifications. So, they have exams, experience, and ethics. This module is an interactive module that tests your competence in exercising professional judgment while facing ethical dilemmas. It puts you in real-life scenarios. Of course, you need to know and understand the principles.

But then how would you apply these ethics when you have a difficult situation? So, we present the students with various business scenarios, ethical dilemmas and the interesting thing to learn about is that its not always black and white choice, it is not always a very obvious choice, what you have to be able to do is to articulate why you have made that choice, on what principles are you applying in that scenario. So, we are very excited about that.

Many of our members who refresh, so we ask our members, every year, to consider ethical competence and ethical behavior. Although this module is originally designed to qualify student, because we are always refreshing the content of that & updating it, members use it themselves and go through the module to update their own competence And, the other thing, of course, is to demonstrate, be transparent when things do go wrong. We have 219 thousand members, they are all human beings, some things are bound to go wrong, but we have a regulatory and disciplinary structure. Ultimately, we remove members who have not complied with our ethical code. So, any member, public or employer can make a complaint about the ethical conduct of a member or student of ACCA, and it will be investigated and if necessary take disciplinary process. I think that’s a very important part of that public interest, we show that when things do go wrong, the action is taken and those hearings are public and we also publish the findings of those hearing so that’s very transparent.

• There is a change in the requirement or skills that the recruiters are looking for GenZ employees. What is the skill set that an accountant needs to sustain in the market?

Well, you do need ethical and technical competence, but that is almost taken as a given if you have an accountant qualification. It would be understood that you have learned those things. I think what is being looked for much more are communication skills and strategic skills that can add value to a business and within that, very clearly emotional intelligence.

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So, being able to demonstrate that you understand your own emotions and how they impact on the decisions you make but also that you are empathetic to the emotions of the others and being an employee, we know that businesses are much more effective, they deliver on the strategy if employees are engaged to that emotional quotient and intelligence that makes everyone feel included in decision making and they organizations run.

So, I think sometimes people concentrate on those paper qualifications or they get very into the books and what have you, but not on being a rounded individual who can communicate effectively. We make the difference in getting the jobs that you want to have.

So, you have to invest in being a human being and that brings dividence in the roles you might achieve.

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• Can you elaborate on the 20 trends shaping future careers that are mentioned in the ACCA report, “Future-ready: accountancy careers in the 2020s”?

Some of the trends are around societal values and the meaning of work and purpose. People want to work in org that have an authentic purpose and they can demonstrate that they are doing good rather than doing bad. So what is the environmental impact of this business, does it have an inclusive work culture and can they see themselves reflected in the way it works. The whole technological piece, so whether its the emerging technology, data, etc. those are very important and trends, the flattening of organizations, and this are always driven by digital. But, its much less commander control and much faster organization.

So, it is quite evident that your career will not necessarily be roles in order, like a ladder, it’s not even a lattice. It’s just much more fluid and the way you will get a reward, financial and personal, probably by doing a completely different role or moving sideways to do an interesting project that develops your capability but that’s not necessarily about a higher promotion or progress, so an organization themselves if they are going to be agile and respond to customer demands or dynamic market conditions, pandemics or whatever it is that might be thrown to the business world, then you have to be agile in the way you respond to that and bureaucratic organizations that know when they can make the decisions unless you are in this position, that doesn’t work anymore, so you have to empower people through that process.

So, I think that’s one of the groups that you can put many things into that. I guess the innovation piece,

Higher Education Digest March 2020

being able to change business models and transforming businesses, we are very excited about that. I think everything links back to digital. But the way that small practices are looking to transform themselves and their clients through the sources they can provide and doing it in a very quick and responsive way. So, that’s more business transformation and as individuals, you can have a very rewarding career and survive, which normally people don’t necessarily think about.

• What is ACCA offering to the Startup ecosystem in India?

We are doing a lot of work globally around S&P transformation, but our members in India do not work in audit, they tend to be more on the advisory side if they’d be working S&P or small businesses themselves.

So, our members would be the finance lead within small organizations. Of course, small businesses cant afford to have a full-time finance person, so they might act as a consultant to a few to help them with their business when it comes to strategy and financial advice.

So, we have lots of successful members who have helped small businesses go through that transformations through podcasts, websites, a key that connects our community. Whether it’s in Beijing, Bengaluru or London, they can learn from each other and that’s again totally possible now and very exciting.

• What would you advise the Indians students who are aspiring to set their foot into the finance industry?

Be ambitious, Be passionate. You re always better at your job if you are passionate about it. So, make sure you put your full passion and dedication to the role. I do believe that having a professional qualification can give you an upper hand in business and career for a lifetime.

It connects you to your peers and that’s a very valuable support network for your lifetime. So, its worth that investment to get through and set yourself up for some tests • What is your opinion about the current Indian Economy and what do you think is its future?

It is very exciting. All the fundamentals are there. I think the government is driving a very can do and aspirational attitude. The key will be scaling the youth dividend to make the most of these opportunities and understanding sustainability issues that come with growth. I think India could be a real leader to using its time with the capability to showcase that sustainable development story.

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fficient use of the limited space available is the need of the hour in our society. No doubt companies operating in this sector are in an active lookout for interior designers with a creative bend. Manipal University Jaipur (MUJ) has produced quite a good number of Interior design students in the past two years and it has clearly seen this demand. Over 90 per cent of MUJ’s Interior Design students have been absorbed by the industry and approximately 5 per cent have dared to begin their own startups. Dr. Sampath Kumar, Director, School of Planning and Design of MUJ explains, “Interior Design being part of Construction Industry still has a growth rate of 7.3 per cent according to MHRD and has a sectoral employment requirement of approximately 15.09 million as per 12th 5-year plan, which makes us think that there is good demand of skilled people. In this line, we as educational institutes create a mechanism wherein education provided by us is in line with current market requirements.”

MUJ has adopted some of the best practices to bring development in the higher education sector, old age syllabi and courses are revamped from time to time so that they meet the demand of the society and industry to meet emerging trends. The university is also focusing on training Hands (Skill), Head (Application) and Heart (Societal Implication) with an appropriate balance among the three. “Skilled based jobs require an attitude of ‘lifelong learning’ from its seekers and with constantly changing world markets as well as its increasing requirements, it is important that students should also make a personal effort in learning current skills essential for survival in their professional domain,” opines Dr. Sampath.

MUJ’s Department of Interior Design came into existence in the academic year 2015-2016. The department believes in increasing the overall spectrum for students with more practical knowledge and options in the design world. The course aims to develop a sense of association between the user and the space that redefines the satisfaction of the end-user. “Adopting the University’s vision of Global Leadership in Higher Education and Human Development, we provide excellent ambience to enhance the teaching-learning experience and to promote creativity and innovation,” shares Ar. Sneh Singh, HoD of Department of Interior Design, MUJ. The department currently running B. Des. (Interior Design) –4-year programme with a multiple exit option of B.A. (Interior Design) – 3-year programme, providing more flexibility to students.

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Innovating the Best Practices in Higher Education With its mission of becoming the most preferred University for innovative and inter-disciplinary learning, MUJ has not only adopted the best practices from reputed Institutions but also initiated some innovative ones, in order to keep ahead of the competition and to provide excellence in higher education.

The process is further facilitated by MUJ being a New Age University enabling it to leverage technology in a big way. “The Interior Design Department is conscious of the fact that the jobs in the industrial set- up are available to the students who are skilled and competent in handling real-life situations,� pinpoints Sneh. The objective of the Department of Interior Design is to promote intellectual inquiry among students, along with their creative expression and originality through a structured curriculum that balances theory with practice, planning, and experimentation; art and technology; as well as creativity and logic.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

MUJ’s Interior Design program take students through a detailed study about the various principles and elements of design and their appropriate applications

In fact, MUJ has inculcated UGC recommended Choice Based Credit System for the students to study at their own pace and earn less/more credits whenever needed. This offers each student to choose from Departmental Elective subjects and Open Elective subjects throughout university following a multidisciplinary approach. “Credit exchange Program is there which enables students to study a semester abroad in foreign universities of academic repute. The Outcome-Based Education curriculum and syllabi enhances student’s skills through professional education,” states Sneh. The institute also integrates inputs from the faculty, industry experts, students and alumni in the curriculum with innovative processes such as Curriculum conclave. “80 percent of the courses incorporated in the programme focuses on skill development and employability,” adds Sneh.

As the Designer needs to be well-versed with new materials, processes, technology and understand aesthetic, social and functional needs of users, the Interior Design Department with the help of faculties, has strengthened the delivery of all laboratory activities such as Furniture workshop, Model making Lab, CAD Lab, Material museum and Construction yard. “We enhance students’ hands-on experience and exposure given to the students with the help of continuous workshops and industry visits. A 6-month Practical Training is a mandatory academic activity as a part of the Interior Design Curriculum to enable the students to get a range of practical experience,” shares Sneh.

Dr. Sampath Kumar, Director of School of Planning & Design

Dr Sampath started his career with Textile Engineering colleges in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra as a lecturer. In 1995, he moved to IIT Delhi to pursue his Doctoral work. He has worked in two more Institutes in Bangalore as Dean of Academics before joining Manipal University. He has worked in about 30 handloom and handicraft related projects and has helped to register three crafts of Orissa under IPR. He is a qualified ISO auditor and qualified Assessor in skill development sectors of textiles, apparels and handmade fabrics. He has visited Germany along with weavers in exhibiting the dhurries of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh made from natural fibers.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

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Ar. Sneh Singh, HoD, Department of Interior Design

Ar. Sneh Singh is an Associate

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Professor & Head of the department of Interior design with 12 years Academic and Industrial experience. She has done her B.Arch. from Government College of Architecture, Lucknow and Master’s form IIT Kanpur in Industrial Design. Before joining to MUJ, she has worked on International Design and construction projects such as Signage & Wayfinding design of Khalifa Stadium (for FIFA world cup 2022). She is also a LEED Accredited Professional (U S Green Building Council) and has good experience of handling Indian and International LEED rated construction projects. She is associated with MUJ from 2014.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Wang Qian and Yi Ye, architects and Interior Designers from China visited Manipal University Jaipur, and gave a talk around their portfolios focusing on “Heritage Preservation,” followed by an interactive session with the students

A Preferred Choice of the Industry Industry collaborations at MUJ are dedicated to academic and professional synergization and research association with more than 34 Frontline Industries/Multinational Organizations. The university endeavors to provide opportunities to its students and faculty to stretch their wings towards global networking.

MUJ’s Interior Design Department has taken initiatives in collaborating with organizations like Hafele and Armstrong, where we are developing our furniture lab with them and industry experts from the organization visit regularly to interact with the students. “Networking with professionals in one’s area of study, areas immediately connected with it as well as distantly related to it is becoming increasingly necessary for his/her growth. One must have an attitude of inquiry, mastery, and networking for career growth as well as for personal satisfaction,” opines Sneh.

MUJ takes care of all the aspects to provide quality education and training to produce world-class professionals.

The Industry-Institute Interaction at MUJ is designed to run longer period for preparing the manpower of world-class

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in the field of design by inculcating the various skills required by the industry, thereby contributing to the economic and social development at large. “We believe in the freedom of thoughts and expression. Following the above, the faculty handpicks the practicing offices/ firms depending on the work domain and preference of each student. The process requires the student to compile the work in their design portfolio, followed by a personal interview,” explains Sneh.

The methodology adopted by The Interior Design Department helps the students to enhance their strengths and work on their weaknesses. Students find a convenient work environment that promoted their career advancement, and most of them prefer to continue to work in the same office on the completion of their graduation.

Most of them are placed under well-renowned designers, architects, furniture studios and MNC’s across India.

MUJ’s focus is not limited to generating employment opportunities for its graduates. Sneh says, “We have a large pool of talented students and faculty members and we support the development of research, thinking and communication processes to enable to envisage creative and innovative solutions to design problems.” To support the research activities of the students, the establishment

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

Department of Interior Design, Manipal University Jaipur arranged an social outreach activity for under privileged children at Rajkiya Madhyamik Vidyalya, Fatehpura to enhance their creative development on both mental and physical aspects

of a centre of excellence and E-cell with adequate funding is provided by the University.

E Cell, MUJ incubates Start-Ups to encourage the student to turn into entrepreneurs. In order to motivate students to come up with innovative ideas, proposals are invited all through the year.

The final projects of the students are assessed by industry experts every semester, thereby improving the placement potential of students.

In addition to that, the experts from the industry are invited regularly to tell students about the innovation and practical techniques of the field. “We have been entering into agreements with national and international academic and industrial set-ups to provide the best academic and professional knowledge to the students,” pinpoints Sneh The university has made its presence felt amongst the highest echelons of the who’s who of the world of Technology and Engineering in such a manner that, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, Government of India sanctioned instituting Atal Incubation Centre at the university premises. DST, Government of Rajasthan, acknowledging the University as the Centre of Excellence, has designated it as Technological and Training Centre. MUJ also has fully funded Students’ clubs and incubation centres to enable students to innovate and participate in various competitive events. As a result, Interior Design students created a new startup ‘Paryaay’- Low cost furniture for rural area. “Our students have started their own club – De artistry club, which conducts regular events and promotes green practices throughout the university,” adds Sneh Keeping in focus the overall vision of metamorphosing into a Global Leader in Higher Education and Human Development, MUJ has recently received NAAC A+ accreditation, making it first such university in Rajasthan. “We have been ranked in top 200 universities by NIRF and committed to be placed in top 100 by 2022 by continuously refining and enriching our methods through employee and student engagement initiatives,” shares Sneh. MUJ is keen on starting new Master programs, PhD course and short-term programs. “From this year, we are focusing more on Research and publications simultaneously strengthening faculty with higher qualifications,” concludes Dr. Sampath.

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE

Entrepreneurship: The Art of Learning from Mistakes Sahil Vaidya is the co-founder of The Minimalist, one of India’s fastest-growing creative solutions companies. In an exclusive interaction with the Higher Education Digest, Sahil talks about his life as an entrepreneur, India’s start-up ecosystem and many more.

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● Who inspires you?

Every entrepreneur in India who has managed to build a large brand or company in a bootstrapped manner while remaining ethical and compliant with the law, inspires me. ● As an entrepreneur, what is it that motivates and drives you? How do you handle failures?

This entire motivation is very internal. It has existed since the time we started this company with the sole aim that we will go to work to create disruption no matter what, and we continue to do that. We also see that our employees follow the same principle, which has ensured great results for the clients that we work with. I think it leaves us with a very satisfying feeling at the end of the day, no matter how many difficulties we have to surpass. I think the feeling of growing with the entire drive that provides excellent and out-of-the-box solutions for the client who in turn appreciates our work is very satisfying for us. We have been very motivated to create this cutting-edge institute which resonated with the section of culture and technology, which will really define the creative landscape in the country. Every day, we work hard to make this vision into a reality in order to create a cutting-edge organisation that produces provocation at a large scale for brands across the world. We really want India to be known as a creative powerhouse, and The Minimalist to earn the reputation of being a company that works with brands globally, to create thought provoking work.

Naturally, scaling up is always the part of the agenda and that is what drives and motivates us. Failures are a part of the entire game.

The biggest amount of learning also happens through failure. I am sure this statement has been made multiple times over, but it doesn’t

Higher Education Digest March 2020

The biggest amount of learning happens through failure

33 Sahil Vaidya

Sahil Vaidya is a graduate from IIT Bombay with a B. Tech and M. Tech in Energy Engineering. Sahil co-founded the company during his final year at IIT Bombay in 2015, along with Chirag Gander. In 2019, Sahil was featured in the prestigious Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list. He is an avid writer, known for his quick wit and humour. He has an active following on LinkedIn and his humour & content is enjoyed by over 500,000 people every month.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

change the facts. After every failure, we take a step back, evaluate and reflect on what went wrong, and how we can rectify our processes, going forward. More than wallowing in pity and self-pity, we rather try to derive learning and course correct after every failure. â—? In one word, describe your life as an entrepreneur.

If I have to describe my life as an entrepreneur in one word, it would be rewarding. Despite the challenges, I think the end result is extremely rewarding. This is especially so when you see that you have been able to produce some really good work and you are able to grow your company, the people that you have hired are really enjoying their stay at the company and brands are also happy at the same time with your work. â—? What do you put your success down to?

Success to me is being able to do meaningful & disruptive work for the clients that we work with and also provide and create opportunities for our team, because when the people are happy the clients are happy too. We really want to ensure that our team grows with us for the long term as we continue to scale. From a business point of view, we of course want to be a very large brand and establish offices abroad and grow our revenues in a solid way in the next five to ten years.

If we are able to achieve that, I would really call The Minimalist a glorious success.

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Sahil Vaidya

Higher Education Digest March 2020

â—? What would you say are the key elements for starting and running a successful business?

It is a very broad question, but I feel that identifying the right market opportunity where there is indeed a gap is very critical. Having the right skill sets to address that gap is the second most difficult thing and third is quick prototyping in order to understand if the proposed solution works or not. I think these are the three things that are extremely critical because many people enter a market that does not exist. They enter the market without the right skill sets or the right solution and many times they are too focused on building a very large solution rather than prototyping and learning from failures and alliterating to address user needs. I think these three things if taken care of would really help in growing a business, which was the route we employed at The Minimalist. We prototyped our social media channel which went viral which in turn generated demand on its own. From here on, we started our company, bootstrapped, were able to bag clients, made profits, which we reinvested into the business, and grew.

We knew we had the right skill sets, intent, and market opportunity. Four and a half years later, we are a team of 90 professionals. â—? At The Minimalist, how do you generate new ideas?

Since the beginning, we have followed a very solid design thinking process, led by out-of-the-box disruption.

By focusing on what has never been done before, and following our unique style of minimalism, it has helped us generate new ideas which are provocative and those which will break the internet. â—? What is your opinion about the Indian Start-up ecosystem and talent available there?

The success stories of Flipkart, Quikr and other companies have inspired a generation of start-ups resulting in a booming startup ecosystem. The success of the startup sector also comes on the back of increased internet penetration across the country. Citizens are now waking up to a host of opportunities in this newly connected and digital era. A large part of this can be attributed to the talent available. For example Bengaluru, , the Silicon Valley of India, has a diverse talent pool. The expertise they bring to the table across various spectrums of technology right from the Internet of things (IoT) or cyberspace, or Machine learning (ML) is truly mind-boggling.

It would be safe to say that start-ups and talent go handin-hand. Since the ecosystem is booming, there are several opportunities being created; and since more and more talent is entering the sector, start-ups are also growing. If we are to continue at this pace, with timely robust funding

from VCs and investors, I think by the year 2030, we will have at least 100 unicorns across the country.

Looking back, 2019 was a year of highs for the VC ecosystem. The year saw some of the largest amount of funding ever poured into the start-up market. As we head towards India 2.0, we can look forward to growth, and servicing newer markets. People in villages are now connected to the internet, which expands our scope to more opportunities to create and serve new markets; this is also the year which is witnessing more indigenous startups with interesting opportunities. In fact, it is this sector that will continue to generate jobs in the years to come, and will become an important part of the Indian economy. â—? The 1st half of the last decade saw a surge in the number of start-ups in India. Do you think the number has come down in the 2nd half of the last decade? What are the challenges for young Indian entrepreneurs in 2020?

On the contrary, I think the 2nd half of the decade has been very crucial for the startup industry. Things have picked up pace. In fact we also started out in 2015. It was around this time that we noticed a lot of start-ups raising big money from VCs so much that USD 5 million was considered a small amount. Companies were raising anywhere from USD 10-30 million, before a funding winter hit. Despite this, the number of start-ups that managed to raise big money post 2015 is huge, and this was further boosted by the success stories of Flipkart and Ola. The former, is also better known as the poster boy for start-ups in India, and looking at its success, it has promoted and encouraged VCs from all over the world to invest in India.

If we are to continue at this pace, with timely robust funding from VCs and investors, I think by the year 2030, we will have at least 100 unicorns across the country

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While the second half of the decade did see some massive exits, such as Citrus Pay, and many others, there has also been the creation of several unicorns.

We can expect 2030 to be crazier, with the creation of large unicorns, multiple exits, and newer business models targeted to meet the needs of Indians.

Despite the increase in the number of start-ups, the ease of doing business in India is still evolving, adding to the challenges faced by young entrepreneurs. Even today, starting a company, in itself, is a very laborious process. Cash flow continues to be one of the biggest problems faced by entrepreneurs. A company, and in turn the economy, can truly prosper when payments are cleared in a timely manner, a process which should be strictly implemented across sectors. Increase in cash flow will also ease out other challenges, which arises due to lack of funds. Enforcement of contracts too are weak across the country, with no enforceable contract drafted that mandates companies clear dues on time, failing which will attract legal action.

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â—? What digital education has the capability to change the education landscape, how can it be used to make more entrepreneurs in the country?

I think digital education can definitely open the doors to create many more entrepreneurs, primarily within the country. Also in the West we have noticed that with the advent of digital, so many business models have evolved and so many new smaller start-ups and nimbler companies have outplayed the heavy weights in the industry. Similarly in India, as the internet penetration increases, digital technology comes to the fold; there are newer opportunities for businesses being created.

There are a lot of traditional businesses going bust, and with the digital wave sweeping the country, this will create newer opportunities to disburse content, education opportunities, methods of doing business, and even the way software works. We have seen so many SaaS companies entering India across Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and these companies are selling globally. With the advent of digital education, it is these new business models and ideas that will really thrive, and given that India has a huge technology talent pool, we will see that these ideas really thrive and go with the emerging economy.

There are so many people with great ideas, and tremendous potential. This is where we partnered with Ecole Intuit Lab, to host a creative entrepreneurship course. When we began our journey, we were fresh out

Higher Education Digest March 2020

of college, and over the last few years, we have our own fair share of adversities and calamities that we have braved through to arrive here today. Therefore we feel that, there are so many entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial mind-sets in the creative world, which if given the right kind of support can really create great ventures. We also believe that India needs to be on the world map of creativity. So in order to do that we wanted to enable these young minds to understand how to approach creative entrepreneurship.

Participants will be trained by the best in class creative entrepreneurs from across the country, right from those who have started creative solutions companies, angel investors or those who have been in large corporate offices, people who have done creative consultancy and worked across other creative functions running their own businesses. We even feel that next Giorgio Armani can come from India, and that is what we want to achieve. We want to create entrepreneurs like Brian Chesky from Airbnb or Garett Camp from Uber.

We want to empower designers, or rather the creative professionals of the country to take the leap and start their own company.

Some of the biggest concerns that we hear from entrepreneurs is regarding the entire process of starting a venture. There are also questions raised regarding the challenges one can expect, and skills required to set up one’s own venture. Naturally, one tends to find themselves trapped, with no centre of authority or place to get all their answers. When it comes to entrepreneurship, everyone is quick to dole out advice, but few who have scaled their venture to a point where it can be considered tangible enough to guide others.

With the dearth of this kind of guidance, and hands-on training, we thought that this course could help budding entrepreneurs face challenges which we too, had faced. What helped us at the time was triangulating our strategies with credible entrepreneurs, who had decades of experience, and were hence the best advisors we could have asked for. â—? What advice would you give to student entrepreneurs who are starting out?

To those starting out, I would advise them to understand the power of prototyping, and whether or not there is really a market out there for their product or service. Where there is failure, try to learn from it. Perseverance pays, so never give up. At The Minimalist, we have been through our fair share of testing times, but at the end of the day, perseverance helped us tide through.

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

ACADEMIC VIEW

When the Indian Urban Design Education Goes ‘Glocal’ Dr. Deepika Shetty is the Director of the Manipal School of Architecture & Planning.

In an exclusive interaction with the Higher Education Digest, Dr. Deepika talks about the challenges of urban design education in India and many more.

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• Looking at the rapid urbanization in India, do you think, we have an adequate number of institutes that can create quality manpower to support this growth? Comparing to the developed nations, what should be the focus of Indian design schools now?

The need of the hour today is to make our urbanization appropriate to the context, with respect to resource management, energy conservation as well as waste management. This detailing is not satisfied by planners alone, urban designers, architects need to address this for every city, every sector, every street, and every building. The number of urban designers, architects, and interior designers are no way sufficient for the number of problems that need a context-specific solution. Some of this can be developed by studying our old living heritage towns. In schools of design, we need to research, study and develop a design for a sustainable and resilient development that can address climate change, resource management, healthy environments, and Sustainable development.

The schools need to educate the people that mimicking the West or standardizing solutions for all cities is damaging and we need to use our studios to demonstrate how to combine old wisdom and modern technology to address the regional issues.

Our students should take up live projects, work with government and stakeholders, study traditional as well as modern systems and demonstrate plans to the people, stakeholders, and government officials. This becomes a win-win situation for educating the students with real-time problems as well as building awareness for the general public to the need for good design.

• As you have been working in the urban design education for a long time, what are the major changes that you have noticed in the way aspirants are taught to engage with the world? Or, in India, are we still exploring the ways to deal with the global urban design trends?

During 2000 the profession was mainly focusing on form-based issues and some parts of urban system management. The theories

Higher Education Digest March 2020

The new mantra of education is going glocal

39 Dr. Deepika Shetty

A Ph.D. holder in Architecture/Urban Design, Dr. Deepika’s area of expertise include Urban Design and development of small towns, morphology and perceptual studies of town structure, theory of design in Indian context and coastal development pattern of Udupi District. She has worked in the capacity of Urban Design consultant as part of CEPT team to review the town planning measures for Bhuj town immediately after earthquake April 2001.

She is also a member of Panel of Advisors for Udupi District Coastal Zone Management Plan since 2013.

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and policies mainly came from the West. Over the years we have realized the need to introduce research as a component of design education. This helped in developing an original thought or concept of design. We have introduced modern technology of simulation, visualization and analyzing software/labs. The profession has become multi-disciplinary hence we have introduced program electives that cut across various disciplines of urban design, architecture, landscape design, interior design, and fashion design. We also encourage open electives which allow the students to do courses across many disciplines across 22 Institutions in the university. To add to that we have made our courses outcome-based education where the focus of teaching is on student learning and evaluation rather than only planning of instructions and syllabus. We look at the overall development of knowledge, skill sets, aptitude and attitude for the profession. The campus also supports the overall personal development of body, mind and social skills. Digital systems of student life cycle management systems and e-pad evaluation system make the education transparent and efficient.

The new mantra of education is going glocal. This means globally educated and locally relevant. The education system allows the students to access information across the globe, have international exposure through joint studios, semester exchange programs with the best universities in the world. Do an international internship in research or practical training. The faculty research and international collaboration makes the education up to date with global standards, trends. It Covers international perspectives, global trends as well as local issues and socially relevant design. The world has acknowledged our traditional knowledge systems as well as changing dimensions of climate change. This has enhanced the need for global education to increase the knowledge bank of traditional systems of resource management and planning. We need to look at the sustainable design which are environmentfriendly, respond to the socio-cultural context, and make a healthy built environment for the people • At present, what are the biggest challenges in the urban design education sector? o The challenge is to balance the requirements of standards set by accreditation authorities as well as match internationally varying education modules and systems. o The commercial design trends have been towards exclusive expensive client requirements. The designers have shied away from social and environmental responsibility. The market needs to be made aware of the costs of Unhealthy practices, energy-gobbling materials, and design. There is no legal standing for public facilities

Higher Education Digest March 2020

design standards. A mistake in road geometry or lack of pedestrian safety standards may lead to accidents, loss of life or loss of livelihood. No case is registered against the wrong design or lack of standards in installing basic urban infrastructure. There is no objection to the depletion of public resources or infrastructure or pollution of the environment. o There is a huge gap in understanding the role of design, it’s standards in day to day execution of urban systems, elements-built forms, and so on. Even products of harmful environmental impacts are not distinguished from environment-friendly ones. No one is paying attention to the lack of implementation of waste segregation. There are so many polluting systems of urban infrastructure damaging our water resources, polluting our soil and air. o There is a need for educating the government to develop standards and procedures for urban development.

There is a need to give a post or role of urban designers in the execution of projects and development of urban infrastructure. In fact, quality and standards of design as a need for every element of urban development is to be ensured in the system of implementation. • How can an urban design educator teach creativity and imagination to make multidisciplinary thinkers What are the challenges for a traditional urban design facilitator in the techdriven world?

Creativity has been traditionally linked to aesthetics and novelty of built forms and products. However, today design has become a verb to develop systems, procedures as well as products. Design is to dwell on how much to build, how to build, what to change and what not to change. Design involves public participation, involves ecological impact assessment, gives evidence-based user requirements, simulates performance evaluation and highlights social responsibility. Design and designers have a role to enhance the health and safety of people.

Enable environmentally responsible behavior and practices. Make socially relevant and environmentfriendly choices.

The core of design thinking has always been multidisciplinary as we need to look at social aspects of the economy, culture, history, humanities and many more. As well as technologies for mechanical systems, services, electrical supply and fittings, electronic gadgets and modules, information conduits and system design, and so on. Today technology also enables efficient management of information, resources, traffic, data, security and many more. However, there is a danger of using our resources for managing information but there is

41 a lack of basic infrastructure or facility. There are instances where smart technologies of CCTV, sensor-based vehicle scanners are installed but road design is faulty, footpaths are missing, drainage lines are overflowing. There is a lack of priority on how to use limited funds and resources of the cities. One has to ensure that the fundamentals of design development are not compromised. No technology can compensate for bad design or lack of infrastructure. One has to educate decision-makers, clients and stakeholders that technology is a tool and needs to be used judiciously where it is relevant and justified. Design quality should not be assessed based on the cost or use of fancy gadgets. It needs to be evaluated based on its scientific evidence of performance efficiency, relevance to society along with the impact on environment and ecology. Role of institutes is to educate designers, enable research cutting across various facets of profession and disciples as well as build public awareness of what is good design. • What advice would you give to a student thinking about becoming an urban designer?

I would encourage students to go for the profession of urban design as there is a need for such a profession in

today’s context. Urbanization has become a need for development so in future urban infrastructure will reach every village. In fact, the lines need to be blurred between rural and urban in terms of urban infrastructure and facilities. There will be settlements of varying sizes doing different roles of production, supply, and consumption.

The urban designers’ role is to ensure a sustainable resilient development balancing the needs of society to the conservation of resources and environment. The scope and future of the profession are immense in the coming years in India, as long as we ensure that ethics and standards of the profession are maintained.

Designers, architects and urban designers are essential to make the built environment a sustainable and beautiful place to live in. It is a profession that affects the life of people and can make a substantial impact on national development and the environment. It is one of the few professions that has a role in almost all sustainable development goals of the UN. The responsibility is huge, and the journey has just begun for young India. It is up to us to recognize the needs of the nation and build something that will become an example to the world for the coming centuries.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

A

n art that requires creativity, skills and most importantly an in-depth understanding of the subject, the industry of Interior Designing has seen a remarkable growth courtesy to the developmental trends and lifestyle changes with Indians. The interior designing industry of India, which is growing at 8 per cent (CAGR) and is expected to reach US$ 1,138 million by 2021.

With Indian urbanites increasingly spending on improving their quality of life due to the rising exposure to exotic destination, the need for interior designers is going on an all-time high. The country is in dire need of designers who effectively and efficiently use the space given to them.

This has led to interior designing emerge as a booming career option for people who have a knack for creativity.

People love to give their spaces an indigenous and unique touch. Also, different homes need different things, so the trend of customising everything right from the design, dĂŠcor and the furniture, is growing these days. With so many transformations happening, it is sure that the domain of interior design industry is going to expand even more in the years to come.

With that in mind, we at the Higher Education Digest present to you the “10 MustWatch Interior Design Institutes in India�.

Featuring these colleges, we aim to present their efforts in helping students explore a creative career like Interior Designing and help in developing an educational ecosystem and bring efficiency in the current education system to support our growing economy, to be recognized and commended by all.

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Higher Education Digest March 2020

College Name

City

Dayanand College of Interior Design

Latur

Maharashtra

ICAT Design & Media CollegeICAT Design & Media College

Chennai

Tamil Nadu

ISDI School of Design & Innovation

Mumbai

Maharashtra

Delhi

Delhi

Bangalore

Karnataka

Jaipur

Rajasthan

Mumbai

Maharashtra

Jaipur

Rajasthan

Pearl Academy

Bangalore

Karnataka

Vogue Institute of Art and Design

Bangalore

Karnataka

IVS School of Design

JD Institute of Fashion Technology

JECRC University’s School of Design

JJ School of Arts

Manipal University Jaipur

Higher Education Digest March 2020

State

Higher Education Digest December January 2019 2020

DAYANAND COLLEGE OF INTERIOR DESIGN

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TRAINING CREATIVE MINDS TO BE FUTUREREADY

W

hile India is striving hard to reap the benefits of its young population, the lacks of the skilled workforce remain a major challenge. As per various reports from the industry, only about 4 percent of our 1.2 billion people are formally skilled, as opposed to countries like the UK, Japan, and Korea where 62 percent, 75 percent and 92 percent of their respective populations are skilled in different vocations. Ar. Priti V Patwari, Principal of Dayanand College of Interior Design opines. “India is a country with abundant talent and skill. What we lack is awareness, training, and appreciation. There are no proper facilities and services which could inform about the other sources for training and improving the skill among the people.�

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In fact, bridging the skill divide is of utmost importance to the Indian economy, as our country is getting ready to enter a phase of accelerated industrial growth that will spur greater demand for skilled workers. “At Dayanand College of Interior Design, we aim to make our students stand tall with confidence among their peers in the market, by shaping, guiding, and making them ready for the market with up-to-date skills that the industry needs,� shares Ar. Priti. Dayanand College of Interior Design is one of the eight institutions operating under the aegis of Dayanand Education Society that is offering

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Ar. Priti V. Patwari, Principal Currently serving as the Principal of

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Dayanand College of Interior Design and HOD at Dayanand College of Architecture , Ar. Priti V. Patwari has been in the field of Architecture for 17 years. She has completed her Bachelors in Architecture from Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai, and is pursuing her Post Graduation from D.Y. Patil College of Architecture,Akurdi in Pune. Experienced in working on residential and commercial spaces, she is well versed with Interior Designing and has designed commercial spaces as well.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

full-fledged Post Graduation, Graduation, Diploma and H.S.C. Courses housed in fully developed campus imparting education to over 20000 students.

Established in 1961, Dayanand Education Society started out with a motto to educate the people of Marathwada, Maharashtra, one of the remote areas in India. Over the years, society has made incredible progress with constant efforts and today it has established a unique identity as one of the premier education societies and created the “Dayanand’’ brand not only in Latur but in entire Maharashtra. In 2013, the society established Dayanand College of Interior Design with an aim to deliver the best education in the field of interior designing and shaping the finest interior designers.

Ar. Priti pinpoints, “We provide an excellent infrastructure for our students, along with libraries, training in the latest software, Web Labs, Workshops, Seminars, Site Visits, that acts as an aide for our students in enhancing their skills and is helpful for them in facing the demands of today’s industry in the long run.” Having MoUs with various consultants, software, modular furniture, and services, DCID conducts training sessions for their students that help them apply their artistic skills in a practical setup. “We aspire to attain professional excellence in the field of Designing, for the benefit of the society by training our students in interpersonal, management, sets-artistic, and technical skills,” adds Ar. Priti.

Aiming at a holistic development of students, DCID makes its students technically sound by conducting enormous site visits, market surveys, workshops and many more

49 Providing a conducive, creative and a rich ambiance for their students, DCID highly advocates the difference between Design and Decoration. The curriculum comprises of more than just aesthetics and aims to impart outcomebased education, to meet the trends and demands of future designers. The institute majorly focuses on the software skills, site execution, and the current requirement of the market, to help their student stand out among their peers.

The students are trained to use the software, that is majorly used for project monitoring and estimation.

Ar. Priti points out, “To boost our students’ confidence, we host annual competitions and arrange exhibitions where they can display their works. Also, we host a cultural event, “Sumakh”, to encourage sports and performing arts among the students.” Along with this, the students of DCID regularly present PowerPoint Presentations in front of the class, to help them combat stage fear and enhance their communication skills. Giving the students a chance to utilize their talent and creativity, DCID hosts annual competitions, focusing on industrial and electronic wastes and encourages them to utilize the design laboratories to paint in their free time and excel in those fields too.

A Stepping-Stone to the Future With a plethora of opportunities for the students in the industry, almost 90 percent of the students at DCID prefer to take the route of entrepreneurship. While 10 percent of the class pursue their further studies, the rest of the class are placed in companies like Sleek Kitchens, Ekbote Furnitures, Shirke Kitchens, Theme Interiors, Barure and Associates, Architects, and Developers, Ar. Sahadev and Associates.

Receiving the Special Jury Award in “Nirman 2015”, DCID is on its way to make a national impression and has already planned their next moves. Planning to start campus placements in the upcoming years, the institute is going to set up laboratories for Material Testing, Plumbing, Survey Lab, and Model Making. The students of DCID will also be trained to be more aware of industrial waste and come up with a green take on the designing aspect, with an aim to provide and attain a sustainable environment. “In today’s world, employment is said to be one of the major problems the people are facing. We strive to beat the problem of unemployment, by hiring youngsters who can’t compete with the scores of others,” concludes Ar. Priti.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

ACADEMIC VIEW

The Future of Design Education in India Alex Velasco, Dean - School of Design, Pearl Academy

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have been working in design education for 25 years and, before that, I had been, both, a student and practitioner since the mid-1980s. In that time, I have witnessed profound changes.

Firstly, there has been a change in design from vocational to the professional model of education, akin to engineering, as design education migrated from art and design colleges to universities.

Secondly, as a consequence of this shift, design education has been searching for its disciplinary foundations. Design is, by nature, inter- disciplinary, combining the visual arts and culture, the social sciences, engineering, management, and others. As design disciplines have absorbed these influences, they have become richer and more interesting. For example, designers owe a debt to anthropology by noting how they do ethnographic research, which is a big part of the design thinking process. Psychology is another major field that furnishes design with the principles of user experience and interaction design.

Third, and most interestingly, has been the technological and macro-economic changes that have occurred in that time. We live in a far more globalized world now. New technologies, such as the PC and the internet, have been great upheavals for designers.

Computer numeric control revolutionized manufacturing. A further jolt to the system occurred when Steve Jobs announced the Apple iPhone in 2007; that shifted the economic and technological centerof-gravity online and towards mobile devices and brought us the applications and connectivity that we see today with electronic

Higher Education Digest March 2020

The demand for designers is set to increase across the board

51 Alex Velasco

Alex Velasco is the Dean of the School of Design at Pearl Academy.

With a career spanning over 35 years in the design industry, Alex Velasco is an expert in design education, product design and design thinking. He has taught design students in the United Kingdom, Turkey, Georgia, and India. He attained a Gulbenkian Foundation Scholarship for postgraduate study (1993) and has been awarded the South African Bureau of Standards design award (2000).

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Alex Velasco

A design practitioner must be knowledgeable and well versed in the processes and tools of design

Higher Education Digest March 2020

payments, online shopping, social media, and gaming. This has proved to be a great opportunity for designers and education has followed suit. In India, while the demand for traditional fields such as graphic design, interior design, accessory design, jewelry design, and product design is strong, they are being eclipsed by the growing demand for creatives especially in communication, interaction, and game design.

Education also strives to prepare post-graduate students for today’s highly unpredictable economy, where designers are required to be business strategists. They must apply rigorous R&D processes that involve thorough market and user research.

They must also master multiple forms of prototyping and user testing. Today, it is common to find designer-entrepreneurs doing all the above in their own companies.

From budding entrepreneurs to large MNCs, design is now a key part of the way we do business. Therefore, the demand for designers is set to increase across the board.

With new technologies permeating our lives, there is a huge demand for creativity and design to ensure that India is able to compete on the global stage. Currently, it is said that 62,000 designers are required to meet the industry demand this year, in India alone, and those numbers are expected to grow in the coming years. India is also a key market for multinational companies, thus providing plenty of opportunities for graduates in the design sector. There is probably a sufficient number of seats in design education institutions to satisfy demand from prospective students, but the majority of those seats are to be found in private education providers and they favor students who can afford it. India should focus on growth in both public and private design education to provide adequate choice to its deserving youth while ensuring that its graduates are well-qualified to comfortably compete on an international stage. To give an example, at Pearl Academy we continue to expand geographically with new campuses opening this year in South Delhi, Kolkata and Bengaluru to add to our existing ones in West Delhi, Jaipur, and Mumbai.

Challenges in the Design Education Sector The design education sector in India is expected to thrive for the foreseeable future; given India’s positive demographics, rising awareness about the importance of education, openness to explore and pursue alternate careers, and the general willingness to invest in higher education.

Young people spend four years of their lives, and often substantial amounts of money, in higher education. Every graduate expects that their certificate will be a passport to financial security and successful career in their chosen field. Our task as design educators is to give them an education and not merely train them for a vocation. That requires a broad academic approach by offering students choices and electives in different subjects and other educational mechanisms. Nevertheless, we must also keep our eye on the ball by improving the quality of our educational product.

The bar is getting ever higher: design practice is rapidly evolving abroad, and there are increasing numbers of institutions offering design at home. It is only fair that we give our students value for their money and time by keeping them abreast of new fields such as UX and UI, service design and transformation design, as well as developments at the cutting-edge of practice.

As the world gets ever smaller, global companies increasingly turn to Indian talent, and Indian graduates increasingly choose to work or continue their studies abroad, so educators must prepare them for that future.

Teaching Creativity and Imagination A design practitioner must be knowledgeable and well versed in the processes and tools of design. Having confidence in your own ability and yet striving continuously to improve and learn are key ingredients for success. Teaching design thinking is the single most effective way to impart creativity and imagination on designers.

The practice of design thinking shows us the benefits of multi-disciplinary groups of people coming together in order to solve problems and innovate. Design thinking

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Building a sustainable future will require profound changes and re-adjustments, unlike anything we have experienced before

Higher Education Digest March 2020

is also inter-disciplinary because the process combines the practices of the social sciences, management, engineering, and other fields. Therefore, students ought to take an interest in subjects beyond the narrow confines of design, and their colleges must expose them to other disciplines to enrich their learning. It is rare for an individual to be an expert in more than one field, yet exposure to other branches of knowledge will make designers conversant and empowered to lead multi-disciplinary teams in their future roles.

Designers and educators must stay abreast of these developments. The focus and tools of design practice are continually evolving. In response to these technological and economic shifts, designers have developed an arsenal of services, including branding, product development, design thinking, user-interaction, user-experience, design of services, design management, strategic design, sustainable design, and more.

Designers are active in addressing some of our most pressing social problems of poverty and deprivation, access to resources, health and education, amongst others. Yet, the long-term challenge for designers, and indeed all of us, will be to address the even greater macro-economic shifts that will be brought about by the crisis of anthropogenic climate change and our continuing harmful and unsustainable impacts on the world’s environment and its biodiversity.

Building a sustainable future will require profound changes and re-adjustments, unlike anything we have experienced before.

Advice to the Aspirants Read up on the design disciplines to understand their differences and find what interests you. Learn about the different educational institutions and their entrance requirements. Think about your possible career and educational trajectory: can you afford to study and where?

Would you like to study abroad? How will you finance your studies? Might you do postgraduate study in the future? You don’t need to answer all these questions, only the immediate ones. But it’s important to think about your options. Once you have decided what you want to study, and you have a shortlist of institutions that you are considering; learn about their programmes and contact them, talk to the faculty to better understand what you are getting into. Think of your career as setting off into the sea in a little boat. You must chart a course to your destination and navigate the obstacles that come your way. You will be under the mercy of currents and battered by storms, and you may, indeed, have to change course from time-to-time. Yet, it is the journey as much as the destination that attracts you and keeps you going. (As told the Editor)

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ACADEMIC VIEW

Technology Enabling Trends in Higher Education Dr. Kulneet Suri, Senior Director, Institute of Management Studies (IMS) Noida

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ata and big data have been buzzwords — rightfully so — for the last several years. Universities are making great progress when it comes to using data to help with retention and student success. However, there is still much room for improvement to take advantage of data-driven decision-making across the entire campus.

For instance, data can be used to determine if classrooms are being utilized optimally before new construction projects are kicked off. It can and should be used to determine if aging computer labs should be renewed or transformed into something that is more useful to the university. Efforts like these can not only streamline campus operations, but also ensure that we are making most of the resources we have in the service of teaching and learning.

Another area where data can be used more is GIS (Geographic Information Systems) data. Historically, GIS data has primarily been used in the hard sciences — but that same data could be analyzed in practically any class on a college campus. Think history, political science, criminal justice, urban planning — there is so much data out there, and we can all do a better job of using it.

The future of any innovation in teaching and learning is almost always a combination of all — or at least most — of the following: academic discipline, pedagogy, learning environment, data and educational technology. And data-informed research and formative evaluation is the key to avoiding just chasing shiny new objects on the one hand and just staying with what we’ve always done on the other. The foundational blocks for making any headway in analytics, particularly learning analytics, are:

Higher Education Digest March 2020

The sheer volume of educational video creates challenges for faculty

57 Dr. Kulneet Suri

Dr. Kulneet Suri, an MBA and an M. Phil in English Language, with Doctorate in Management from LTSNU (Ukraine) is currently Senior Director-International & Business Development at Institute of Management Study (IMS) Noida, IMS-DIA and DIT which is part of UNISON Society and has 11 Institutes in Noida and Dehradun.

Dr. Suri is the Vice-President for CEGR, Delhi-NCR chapter. She began her career with Airtel and has there on successfully risen by handing multidimensional assignments.

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As we increase dependence on instructional videos, we also need to focus on issues of accessibility for people with a range of needs

Dr. Kulneet Suri

Higher Education Digest March 2020

a) Institutional (rather than vendor) ownership of data generated by teaching and learning activity. b) Transparency of data models created through our data (rather than being proprietary). c) Data and integration standards.

YouTube began in February 2005, and 12 years later, Wikipedia reports 1 billion hours of content watched on the platform each day. The sheer volume of educational video creates challenges for faculty in creating new content, as well as finding and reusing content. During the busy academic semesters, faculty do not have time to watch, curate and clip videos! The cognitive overload of video use can be significant, leading us to look for specialized collections such as Ted Talks and Khan Academy.

Harvard’s DART initiative is one recent effort to try to help faculty and instructional designers make full use of open access assets created for edX MOOCs. As we increase dependence on instructional videos, we also need to focus on issues of accessibility for people with a range of needs.

Digital education is generating new learning opportunities as students engage in online, digital environments and as faculty change educational practices through the use of hybrid courses, personalized instruction, new collaboration models and a wide array of innovative, engaging learning strategies. Furthermore, a 21st century view of learner success requires students to not only be thoughtful consumers of digital content, but effective and collaborative creators of digital media, demonstrating competencies and communicating ideas through dynamic storytelling, data visualization and content curation. As instructors create assignments and develop rubrics for assessing new forms of student work across academic disciplines,

faculty and students would benefit from access to new collaborative spaces with the technology and consulting expertise to successfully complete media-rich assignments and projects. One example at Oregon State is in general biology courses, where Senior Instructors Lesley Blair and Mark Lavery infuse their own lectures with media-rich components and have their students include their own media elements in assignments and social media postings. You can follow their journey in changing biology education at vividscience.org and @VividScience on Twitter.

At Oregon State, the College of Agricultural Sciences is developing a precision agriculture curriculum, which is all about generating and using data that will allow farmers to make the best decisions possible.

Faculty members in the Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering expect IoT to play a significant role in the generation of data that, when matched with the power of the cloud and scientifically validated algorithms, will allow producers to make smart decisions.

Assistant Professor Chet Udell, a faculty member in the department, is developing a multi-term curriculum (funded in part by an Information Systems Learning Innovation Grant) which aims to teach students how to build and develop sensor packages and interact with the cloud, thus putting theory into action. In addition, Professor John Selker runs the OpenSensing Lab, which focuses on developing environmental sensing projects and research using solidstate sensors of water, atmosphere and soil status. Through the Internet of Agriculture (IoA), the technology for sensors and communication could potentially play a critical role to ensure our ability to feed the human population in 2050.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

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JECRC UNIVERSITY’S SCHOOL OF DESIGN

PUSHING THE FRONTIERS OF INTERIOR 60

DESIGNING

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ducation was started out with an aim to make an impact on students with knowledge.

While teaching the students is the primary focus of most education systems, generating new knowledge through creativity becomes secondary to most scholars. We are left to choose, between knowledge and creativity, which one is more important? The question is more relevant to students in higher institutions of learning since this level of learning is developed enough to generate creative thinking, in addition to impacting students with knowledge.

JECRC University (JU) is driven by the spirit of innovation-led research, which is clearly seen in its infrastructure, as well as practices.

The multifaceted research encompassing subject-specific exploration

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and contexts of the business environment, helps the students operate and perform effectively. “We aim to create valuable resources for the industry and society through its interventions in the creation of research and innovative academic, professional and cultural enhancements.�, says Shivani Kaushik, Head of Department, Faculty of Design, JU. With its campus in the capital city of Rajasthan, Jaipur, JU has a 32-acre Campus with unique classical architecture, thoughtful layout, and landscaping to create a perfect ecosystem. JECRC University was established and

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Incorporated as a State Private University vide JECRC University Act (Act 15/2012 of Rajasthan State Legislature) from the UGC. “We aim to identify various areas of focus and specialization, based on an informed perception of Indian, regional, and global needs, on which the university can concentrate on”, adds Shivani.

Pursuing to focus on research and spirit of innovation, the college aspires to develop human potential to its fullest extent so that intellectually capable and imaginatively gifted leaders can emerge in a range of professions. Built to initiate a thoughtful and reactive design process, the B.Des in Interior Design program of JU facilitates the students to understand and create human habitation spaces. Shivani includes, “Our program aims to provide varied understandings of theory, studio, practical skills, live projects, case studies, field trips and encounters with industries and professionals.”

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The students are trained in representative skills through regular studios and instilled with environmental awareness, for the benefit of human health, wellbeing, and productivity. Shivani points out, “The department has a team of specialized Design Faculty that focuses on freehand drawing, technical drawing and model making, which are further supplemented through elective subjects such as Interior Lighting, Interior Landscape, Sustainable Interior, Set Design, Interior Project Management, Furniture Design, and Product Design.”

Pushing students into being an independent and effective learner, the program aims at promoting a holistic approach to the designing process by simultaneously involving inputs from theory, allied subjects, and electives to design.

Encouraging Innovation and Creativity Believing in “Learning by doing”, JU’s School of Design comes up with different realistic projects within the university itself for the students. The students get practical experience in commercial contexts, the needs of the client, and enhance their decision-making skills, problem-solving skills, and communication skills. “Know-How”, a workshop

Shivani Kaushik, Head of Department, Faculty of Design Currently serving as the Head of the Department, School of Design at the JECRC University, Ms. Shivani Kaushik has studied Jewelry and Textile Design and is an alumnus of the University of Rajasthan. With 20 years of teaching experience, she continues to serve as a Board of Study Member and Examiner for Design in various other Universities and Colleges.

School of Design and School of Hotel Management at JECRC University conduct an event called “ART ON A PLATE” is a perfect blend of creativity, enthusiasm, zeal and efforts

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64 series, is conducted on a regular basis where eminent industry personalities come as guest lecturers and interact with the students. “With an aim to expand the horizons of student’s creativity further, these workshops are a great way for the students to gain hands-on experience and rapidly acquire knowledge in their area of expertise” opines Shivani.

Striving to get the best out of their students, JU has many Techno-Cultural Clubs, Student Chapter of Professional Bodies, Technology Incubation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre, Global Outreach Programs, Training and Placement Cell, and many more special facilities for the students to utilize.

These facilities were provided with an aim to make the students focus and aide in their career growth.

“We believe in enabling the students with the latest technological skills. Thus, preparing them for the future is our key responsibility as a technical institution. In this direction, we are strongly looking for collaborating on the latest technologies like UI, UX, Design Thinking, Spark and many more”, says Shivani. In their 6th Semester, the student at JECRC University undergo internships of 140 days in an Interior Designing or Architectural, where they form a project report about the practical experience,

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JECRC University firmly believes in importance of experimental learning and offers internship opportunities that integrates knowledge and theory learned in classroom with practical application and skill development in professional setting

they gained by working on various projects, under the supervision of a professional designer. They get handson experience in the existing work practices, conditions, and acquire in-depth technical know-how.

Industry experts are regularly invited to make our students acquainted with the latest industry trends and design methodologies. “Furthermore, we are in the regular practice of organizing industrial visits for the students where we take them to national-level exhibitions and ongoing live premium sites�, says Shivani. The whole process is well coordinated with the client industry and is efficiently regulated with mentorship and guidance from faculty at JECRC University throughout the training.

Facing the Industry World The industry offers opportunities to young designers in large setups of architecture, interior design, kitchen design, and exhibition design practices. Graduates are equipped to begin their own practice or further their education by applying to study in post-graduate programs ranging from furniture, exhibition, product, and interaction design to craft and technology, historytheory-criticism and Energy efficiency and green design.

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Shivani says, “we have an exemplary placement record with our students being chosen by industry leaders every year. Hosting ‘Stand-alone Recruitment Drives’, leading business houses participate to test the mettle of students.

We receive top-notch companies every year for recruiting the students, owing to our consistent performance in these years.” Receiving 100 percent placements, JU School of Design has a focused approach towards persistent and multi-dimensional training of students in-line with the industry expectations and gives hands-on-learning has led to an increase in the number of placement offers and record salary packages.

“Our students are recruited by companies like Kredenza Interior Studio, R.K. Associates, Connoisseurs Desk, Hiren Patel Architects, Shantanu Garg Designs and many more”, adds Shivani. With the best placements and paid internships with an average stipend of Rs. 18000, The alumni of JU are working with renowned firms like Hiren Patel Architects, Ahemdabad, Shantanu Garg Designs, Jaipur, Kredenza Interior Studio and many more.

Streamlining JU’s School of Design Aiming to scale new heights, JU has already sketched out a roadmap to achieve it. The university plans on collaborating with industry leaders to get the latest

Higher Education Digest March 2020

technological skills on board to help make the students future-ready. “We also plan on increasing our interactions with the industry to get to know more about the industrial problems and appropriate solutions for the same”, says Shivani. JU is going to train its students and develop a corporate connect to increase the bar of the average package in the recruitment drives. Along with this, the college is also planning to work extensively in the field of research in order to publish IPR from the university and bag extensively funded research projects from various funding agencies.

Students at the JU get a chance to develop their critical thinking skills, work-oriented skills, and behavioral skills, that help them acquire a positive attitude towards themselves, their peers, faculty, facilities, and others, which gives them the ability to carry out directions, meet deadlines and attendance requirements.

Creativity among college students should be encouraged than the sole pursuit of knowledge in order to develop solutions that are so much needed in the working world and society at large. “We aspire to become a renowned center of higher learning, and work towards academic, professional, cultural, and social enrichment of the lives of individuals and communities”, concludes Shivani.

....In Pursuit of Academic Excellence MGM University

(Estd.by govt. of Maha. Act-xxvi of 2019) Aurangabad.

67 MGM Institute of health Sciences

( Deemed University, U/s 3 of UGC Act, 1956 ), Mumbai.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

STUDY ABROAD

How new policies are promoting education in Regional Australia

By Rohit Sethi, Director, ESS Global-Study Abroad Consultant

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ustralia has traditionally been among the top study abroad destinations for students in India. With a multitude of bright young minds moving to Australia in pursuit of quality higher education as well as employment opportunities, its major cities witnessed a population boom over the years. Consequently, the Australian Government recently introduced policies aimed at mobilizing both domestic and international students to study at universities in regional – non-city – areas.

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Incentivizing the regional expansion: Policy changes at a glance The new rules effectively revised the definition of “regional areas” in the country. Following their implementation in the end of 2019, Regional Australia now includes all of the country with the exception of three areas that are recognized as Major Cities. These include Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne.

This move serves two purposes. On the one hand, it seeks to de-pressurize the major cities by encouraging people to migrate to less populated regional areas. At the same time, the expanding talent base in these areas can then be tapped to accelerate regional development.

It is an obvious fact that cities – epicenters of innovation and progress – provide a superior range of access, opportunities, and options. So, how does asking students to shift to regions that are comparatively less equipped with facilities and amenities be to their advantage?

While cities indeed represent a treasure trove of lucrative opportunities, the same also causes urban hubs to become overcrowded. This naturally results in the competition for said opportunities – be it educational or employment – to rise in intensity. By encouraging migration to Regional Australia, the Federal Government is providing students and migrants with the opportunity to avail more or less equivalent – if not superior – perks minus the stiff competition.

But that’s not the end of it.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

Australia is as much a hub of innovation as it is a cultural hotspot

69 Rohit Sethi

With more than a decade of experience in the international education consultancy service, Sethi now works as the Director of ESS Global – Study Abroad Consultant. Sethi’s professional experience encompasses Sales, Business Leadership, Personnel Management, Operations, General Management & Administration, Budget Development, Advertising, Media Planning, Relationship Management and Competition Analysis. ESS Global is a technology focused organisation, working with a mission to help students realize their international academic aspirations with high integrity, continuous innovation and unparalleled commitment

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Under the new policy, nearly 1,000 scholarships will be granted annually for the next four years to both domestic and international students applying for regional universities after November 2019

Top benefits that students stand to avail under the new policies 1. Favorable post-study work visa terms As compared to those studying in cities, international students willing to study at regional universities stand to avail one extra year on their post-study work visa, as per the revised regulations. In other words, the new policy extends the tenure of international students in Regional Australia by an additional twelve months in which to search for jobs and work full-time after completing their studies.

Higher Education Digest March 2020

2. Extra benefits in points system for PR New rules also benefits in extra benefits in points system which make them eligible for Permanent Residency to international students who choose to study at regional universities. These points are crucial for individuals seeking to apply for permanent residence in the country.

Hence, this benefit is among the main incentives that encourage immigrant students to move to regional towns.

3. Special tertiary scholarships Under the new policy, nearly 1,000 scholarships will be granted annually for the next four years to both domestic and international students applying for regional universities after November 2019. These special Destination Australia scholarships, each worth USD 15,000, will be offered to students pursuing programs from Certificate IV level to Doctoral degrees. Apart from this, many regional universities also offer a range of scholarships to attract international students.

Besides these advantages, students can also access the following concomitant benefits should they choose to live in towns: • Reasonable cost of living: It is a universally acknowledged truth that lifestyle expenses in cities are much more as compared to those in regional areas.

This alone serves as a major plus point for international students who seek the ideal combination of cost-efficient living and excellent education.

• Personalized learning: It is only natural that overcrowded cities will have overcrowded universities.

Regional universities, therefore, offer the unique advantage of small class sizes that can facilitate superior teacher-student interaction for students who prefer personalized education and engagement.

• A closer brush with the Australian culture: Australia is as much a hub of innovation as it is a cultural hotspot. While cities are multicultural in nature, students can experience cultures and traditions unique to Australia in the regional towns. On top of this, Regional Australia boasts an exquisite set of landscapes and wildlife, and immigrant students can get a sense of the rawness of the Australian wilderness only in regional areas.

Finally, it may also happen that a specialization that a student seeks to pursue is only available at universities in regional areas. Marine courses are available in Tasmania are among such courses. These coincidences notwithstanding, the new policies rolled by the Australian Government further reinforce the country’s position as a top international hub for students and jobseekers alike.

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