Pune: A two-day national level conference on Equity organised by National Project Implementation Unit (NPIU) of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and State Project Implementation Unit (SPIU) in association with College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP) was inaugurated at the college’s main auditorium on Saturday.
Equity is one of the main attributes in Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) phase III. And in accordance to this, the conference was organised. TEQIP is a World Bank assisted project for upgradation of Technical Education in India. CoEP has shown performance in phase-I and phase-II of TEQIP project. Presently in its phase-III, CoEP is one of the institutes selected under component 1.3.
Secretary of Higher Education at MHRD R Subrahmanyam, Secretary of Higher and Technical Education, Saurabh Vijay, IAS, Uttar Pradesh, Saroj Kumar, Director of Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), Maharashtra State Abhay Wagh, Central Project Advisor of NPIU, Prakash Khodke, Lead Tertiary Education Specialist of World Bank, Francisco Marmolejo, Social Development Specialist of World Bank Surbhi Dingra, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Thermax MS Unnikrishnan, along with the officials from NPIU, SPIU, DTE, CoEP were present at the event.
Marmolejo said, “Conscious efforts need to be made on every level in order to ensure equity of opportunities for youth, to have a better future for the country as well as the youth. Equality aims at making something available to all and bring each one on the space to avail the given opportunities.
He added TEQIP programme has aimed at improving the quality of technical education and TEQIP III particularly focuses on Equity, Gender, Minority, etc.
Chief Guest Saurabh Vijay expressed deep concern towards lower enrollment of students from remote areas. He said, “The universities should make prospective plans to identify remote pockets of the nation where higher education is yet to reach and socially disadvantaged groups need to be targeted. He also addressed other concerns like the challenges faced to attract female students towards STEM Programmes.
The programme was followed by the unveiling of the TEQIP III brochure and inauguration of the exhibition wherein 13 institutes across the nation who have participated in the TEQIP III programme have set up stalls displaying the best practices and projects implemented at their institutes.
