The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship on Tuesday signed an agreement with Indira Gandhi Open University to link vocational education and training with higher education. The partnership aims to further strengthen the vocational and technical training infrastructure while creating opportunities for India’s youth to access better job opportunities.
Trainees belonging to National Skill Training Institutes, Industrial Training Institutes, Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra’s and Jan Shikha Sansthans will be benefitted from this program which aims at upward mobility to enable these students to pursue higher education for better livelihood opportunities. is to be born.
Through collaboration, students will now have an opportunity to:
Under the partnership, 32 NSTIs, over 3,000 government ITIs, 500 PMKKs and around 300 JSSs will be linked to IGNOU as registration centres, examination centres and work centres for training,” a statement said. With the collaboration, students will now get an opportunity to join IGNOU’s three-year degree program, – it said.
A Project Steering Committee with representatives from both the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and IGNOU will monitor and review the progress of the programme. The MoU is initially subject to renewal on mutual agreement for a period of 10 years. This MoU is in line with the Sustainable Development Goal 4.4 and National Policy on Education (NEP) 2020 to increase the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in higher education, including vocational education, to 50 percent by 2035.
High social and economic mobility to our youth:
Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, R. Agarwal said that India’s youth demographic dividend is the engine of its economic growth and it needs access to quality education as well as meaningful avenues to acquire skills and vocational training. He said that this initiative is aimed in this direction as it provides high social and economic mobility to our youth with requisite qualifications.
Indira Gandhi National Open University has started MA program in Urban Studies in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) mode from January session. The School of Extension and Development Studies, IGNOU will be offering MA program in the admission cycle in January and July every year. Graduates can apply for the MA program.
A rapid scale and planned urbanization is needed:
As urbanization is taking place rapidly and planned urbanization is the need of the hour, this program will be helpful not only for in-service personnel working in urban area, parallel bodies and urban local bodies but also for learners of various fields. Sociology, Economics, Political Science and other subjects who want to make a career in urban development,” the IGNOU release mentioned.
According to IGNOU, the program covers urbanization and its issues and challenges. The various aspects covered in this program include issues such as urban planning, urban management, urban governance and poverty, unemployment, inequality, urban waste management, land use planning and decentralized planning.
This master’s degree program also has courses on urban ecology and environment, sustainable development and development dynamics in smart cities, urban waste management, governance and development and urban construction,” the IGNOU release mentioned.
