Ooty : Education being a powerful instrument for reducing poverty and inequality, it was necessary to stress on access to education, availability of quality education and Dissemination of education through technology, Tamil Nadu Governor, Banwarilal Purohit said Thursday.

India held an important place in global education and has one of the largest networks of higher education institutions in the world with 993 universities and 39,931 colleges, Purohit said while inaugurating the two day conference Chancellor’s vision 2030 innovating education in the Era of Industry 4.0.

Tamil Nadu enjoys a covetous reputation for higher education in the country with a gross enrollment ratio of 48.6 per cent compared to a national average of 25.8 per cent and state has 59 Universities and about 8.64 lakhs of students passing out every year, he said.

Giving the details Industry 1.0 fro 18th Century to Industrial revolution 3.0, Purohit said, the spurt of Internet and telecommunication industry in the 1990’s revolutionized the way we connected and exchanged information called Industry Revolution 4.0.

It also resulted in paradigm changes in the manufacturing industry and traditional production operations, through merger of boundaries of the physical and the virtual world, he said.

” The teaching pedagogies and the curricula of education have to be redesigned which will prepare the students to understand the dynamic demand side transformations in today’s global context. They will experience perspectives of change, the uncertainty of the global and national environment, and find ways to manage and navigate themselves through the changes.

It is, therefore, most pertinent that, as a response to the clarion call of the Nation to foster systematically the culture of dynamism and Innovation amongst all our Higher Education Institutions, the Raj Bhavan Secretariat has taken the initiative with the help of the Indian Institute of Management, Trichy to organize this two-days Conference, Purohit said.

The Vice Chancellors of Tamil Nadu who are here, not only to benefit from the deliberations at the Conference but also to formulate a most pragmatic education model to meet challenges of the fourth industrial revolution. We should implement the model in our universities and carry the message across the academic fora, so that we assume the primacy of ‘educational institutions enabled for the era industry 4.0’ in India, he said.