The Vice President of India, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu, inaugurated a two-day national conference on "Industry-Academia Interaction for Improvement of Quality of Academics", organized by the Indian Institute of Petroleum and Energy (IIPE).
Addressing delegates, Shri Naidu urged citizens to study, analyze and debate the Draft New Education Policy thoroughly, emphasizing that reforms in education must be inclusive and deeply considered.
Highlighting key challenges in the current education landscape, he said many graduates lack employable skills, pushing industries to provide extended on-the-job training. He called for a complete revamp of the education system to integrate life, language, technological, and entrepreneurial skills.
Shri Naidu stressed the need for a symbiotic relationship between academia and industry to build a thriving innovation ecosystem, ensure employment generation, and align education with real-world needs. He encouraged long-term partnerships, urging corporates to fund research, set up innovation-focused corpus funds, and help reshape curricula to reflect industry trends.
He reiterated that India must strive to reclaim its stature as a global knowledge hub—a modern-day ‘Vishwaguru’—by promoting research, innovation, and global competitiveness in education.
The Vice President also called for educational institutions to focus on application-oriented, problem-solving approaches and emphasized the importance of creating knowledge clusters to drive meaningful research and intellectual capital.
Referring to initiatives like ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ and Swachh Bharat, Shri Naidu stated that education must also nurture socially responsible citizens and instill values that eliminate gender bias and foster civic consciousness.
Senior officials including Prof. V.S.R.K. Prasad (Director, IIPE), Prof. G. Nageswara Rao (Vice-Chancellor, Andhra University), Prof. M. Chandrasekhar (Director, IIM-Visakhapatnam) and industry leaders from CII, APPCB, NRDC, and AP Chambers were present.
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