By Garima Singh | Hindu BusinessLine | August 17, 2019
In a bid to make contemporary technical education in India meet the needs of the 21st century, around 40 entrepreneurs have joined hands to set up Plaksha University.
“Our aim is to make engineering education inter-disciplinary and to blur the boundaries of electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering and to also bring elements of design and entrepreneurship in technical education,” said Vineet Gupta, Founder and Trustee, Plaksha University. The university will be unique in terms of pedagogy, curriculum and faculty, he said.
Gupta who is also Founder and Trustee of Ashoka University added that not just in India in technical institutions elsewhere also these aspects are not often included.
The university is to be set up in Mohali by 2021, but it has commenced its flagship course ‘Tech Leaders Fellowship Program’ (TLFP) for a batch of 59 students from August 1.
Right now, they cannot start an undergraduate programme as the university has to be legislated to offer a formal degree but the fellowship programme can be commenced as it is a certificate course, said Gupta.
Once the university is formed in 2021, the fellowship programme will continue and the batch strength may get doubled, he added.
Admission
Meanwhile, the admission process for the undergraduate programme will start around November 2020 and the first batch will commence in August 2021.
Plaksha
The word Plaksha comes from Indian scriptures which describe it as ‘world-tree’ in the foothills of Shivalik, from where the mythical river Saraswati is believed to have originated. The name therefore denotes the university as a tree from where a river of learning can flow endlessly, constantly renewing itself and nurturing everything that it touches.
The article was first published in the Hindu BusinessLine on August 17, 2019.
