E-Paper
Education carries social responsibility
"EDUCATION IS intimately connected to one's life opportunities' besides one's physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. However, the benefits of education should not be solely viewed as a benefit to oneself." These were the views of Prof (Dr) Satish Kumar Tripathi ,Pro Vost and Executive vice-president for Academic Affairs, State University of New York, Buffalo, USA, at the third convocation programme of Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad (IIT-A), on Saturday.
"EDUCATION IS intimately connected to one's life opportunities' besides one's physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. However, the benefits of education should not be solely viewed as a benefit to oneself."
These were the views of Prof (Dr) Satish Kumar Tripathi ,Pro Vost and Executive vice-president for Academic Affairs, State University of New York, Buffalo, USA, at the third convocation programme of Indian Institute of Information Technology Allahabad (IIT-A), on Saturday.
According to Prof Tripathi it is absolutely critical to acknowledge and understand that education must transcend self-centred objectives, personal prosperity, status, and rank. Instead one must acknowledge and embrace the belief that with education comes responsibility both personal and civic.
Prof Tripathi pointed out the significance of information technology (IT) and said that in every country where IT has been employed extensively, it has increased employment and job opportunities. We need to assess the extent to which IT has touched our country. Further we need to employ it extensively to make the digital technology an integral part of our lives, working, government and industry, so that we can create value and employment.
He said that with the magnitude of change enabled by information technology, our current and future leaders have been challenged to recognise and embrace our humanistic value of access to information, opportunity for education and just participation in our global economy.
"In the last decade, the proliferation of communication networks has not only connected people, places and ideas in unprecedented ways, but catalysed the evolution of social structure. Suddenly, it is possible to transcend physical and geographic borders more easily, and that freedom has fostered a new willingness to partner both within and outside the traditional boundaries of organisations and countries", said Prof Tripathi. "It is through creative and collaborative contemplation we can achieve the improbable", added Prof Tripathi. Chairman, Board of Governors IIT-A Padma Bhushan FC Kohli said that modern world is dependent of evolution and accretion of knowledge in all fields. We need to encourage and enable our institutions towards restructuring and dissemination of new knowledge and need to induct more and frequent changes in the curriculum.
He said that there exists a strong co-relation between economy and education and education needs to be developed for strengthening the economy. The education in our country is in crisis inspite of institutes like IITs, IIITs and the reason being the policies failing to provide excellence of education at under-graduate level. The institutes should attempt to attain financial independence, advance curriculum and the industries should come forward to develop engineers in collaboration with the institutes. Kohli also advocated for support to the women engineers in the country.
Earlier IIIT-A Director, Dr MD Tiwari, presented the report of the institute. Prof Tripathi was conferred with D Sc honoris causa by the institute.
The guests awarded the degrees to the qualified candidates of B Tech (IT), M Tech (IT), MBA (IT), Master Programme in Cyber Law and Information Security besides Doctor of Philosophy (IT) to Anurika Vaish. The guests also presented gold, silver and bronze medals to the meritorious students of the institute besides two special gold medals namely Pt Yadunath Tiwari Memorial Gold Medal and Shashank Varma Memorial Gold Medal to Abhipsita Singh and Preetika Shukla respectively. The programme concluded with the national anthem.