Principal of Bhonsala Military College Suchita Kochargaonkar is a governor-nominated member of the academic council of Savitribai Phule Pune University. Being an educationist and psychologist, Kochargaonkar shared her views on higher education scenario in Nashik, skill-based programmes and students’ psychology in an interview with TOI’s Chaitanya Deshpande.What are the changes need to be incorporated inhigher education?Higher education must be skill-based. Every programme should have 60% practicals and 40% theory so as to make it skill- and job-oriented.What measures would you suggest to face challenge of employability?As soon as students complete graduation, he or she should be job-ready. To achieve this, higher education must cater to demands of the market or industry. Skill-based professional progarmmes must be initiated.How can we ensuremaximum attendance in colleges?A Mechanism should be developed to make it compulsory for students to attend college regularly. The biometric system may be made compulsory and this may be linked with scholarship and free-ship of students. Further, it may be linked with examination as well.What new programmes must be introduced?Programmes regarding military and other defensive training may be introduced in all colleges. This may help during crises such as the war or natural calamities.Being a psychologist, what other programmes do you think must be introduced?Programmes such as disaster management and human rights are the need of the hour. Programmes regarding psychological counselling are also essential. Physical health, along with mental health, is important as today’s youth is spending lot of time in the virtual world, which may lead to loneliness, alienation and frustration.Do you think students are becoming self-centric and losing social awareness?Yes, and the society is responsible for this. The loss of human touch and inadequate face-to-face communication are the major hurdles. Students are more interested in the social media and the illusionary virtual world rather than the real one. The teacher must perform the role of a parent and should develop reciprocal sense of belongingness.How would you contribute towards prosperous and enriched life-education rather than thecareer-oriented one?Colleges should be the centers of imparting and developing ‘happy culture’. In this regard yoga can be made compulsory so as to have a healthy lifestyle of students. The fast food and junk food must be banned on college premises. Girls must enjoy conducive environment that allow them protection with freedom and respect.Do you think present education is enough to connect students with mainstream society and make them financially able?Unfortunately, the bookish degrees are not satisfactory. The research works too are not output- or result-oriented or socially useful. The teacher has a greater role to perform. We should create more student-centric content and should use innovative teaching methods. Need-based add-on courses of three months’ duration can be introduced to bridge the gap.What measures should be taken to develop educational quality of colleges?The evaluation made by NAAC, after every five years, is not enough to have educational quality of colleges. In this regard, the academic audit, teaching-learning evaluation, research quality, the number of students employed, etc, should be objectively evaluated on an yearly basis by the university. Feedback from all the educational stakeholders should be collected and accordingly the programmes must be modified.

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