In an exclusive interview, Dr Suku Bhaskaran, president of GD Goenka University, spoke about the key to building a successful university like his and shared his methods for achieving success in the educational sector. “The key to building a successful university is the same as the key to building any organisation. Any successful organisation works on achieving its vision and mission. In the case of vision and mission statements of universities, including our own, this refers to the quality of teaching and learning, research and external engagement endeavours and outcomes. There is no single key but several keys that work in tandem with one another. So, the cohesive manner in which different things work is important,” he said.
Adding to the subject, Dr Bhaskaran said, “A good university creates an outstanding teachinglearning, research and external environment so that students receive a well-rounded education. It is where students and staff have a passion for scholarship and are ethical in their academic pursuit.”
On the matter of assessing the performance of universities, he said, “We will need to be able to assess and also measure outcomes in teachinglearning and external engagement. In the contemporary situation, academic leadership worldwide is happy and wants to be guided by higher education ranking measures used in the likes of the Times Higher Education World ranking, US World University rankings and Shanghai World University ranking. These, of course, have limitations but whatever the limitations of these, they offer an excellent means of benchmarking performance and, therefore, this is what a good measure of whether we are successful or not is.”
Dr Bhaskaran also mentioned how his university uses a multitude of measures to learn about the success of their teaching-learning process. About five years ago, the institution introduced blended learning with block course delivery. “Our action to invigorate teaching-learning practices is informed by research and through attracting academic staff with qualifications, requisite training, competencies and exposure to contemporary teachinglearning practices worldwide. We give priority to learning outcomes and examine whether our teaching methods achieve intended learning outcomes,” he explained.
“We assess learning outcomes by setting assessments and assessment rubrics that will enable us to determine whether the intended learning outcomes have been achieved. We monitor student satisfaction through anonymous course feedback that captures all aspects of the learning experience, course content, assessment and quality of student and staff engagement. We also undertake class representative academic staff meetings and this informs us well. We get feedback from external academics and industry representatives at the academic board level. We analyse placement outcomes and discuss with employers as to what is needed. We have periodic focus group engagements with students in various programs. We are also introducing flipped classrooms in some cases at this stage. We are focusing on some causes because we want to learn from acting on this before we adopt this more widely across causes and programs. We have practices that enable students to learn from past assessments,” he elaborated further on the matter.
Dr Bhaskaran also shared his opinion on whether students will still want to go abroad for higher studies in the future. He said that the aim of acquiring permanent citizenship abroad is what attracts students and how the resources, the ecosystem, and the reputation of universities abroad are perceived to be better than ours. “They can also work part-time and, to some extent, defray some causes,” he said. He added that the number of students going abroad will only increase once the lockdown is lifted.
Speaking of his vision for higher education in India, Mr Bhaskaran said, “My vision is that India should have quality higher education institutions that have good leadership, quality academics and are able to match global best practices and make significant contributions to the community.”
He also suggested a few reforms that can be introduced for better education in the country. “Bring home leading academic leaders and provide them with the opportunity to develop our higher education institutions,” he added.