Spend more on education: Purandeswari

• BITS Hyderabad held its second convocation- 613 awarded degrees
• BITS Pilani on an ambitious growth plan

Union Minister of state for Commerce and Industry D Purandeswari has called for increased spending on education by the state governments. Delivering the second convocation lecture of Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani- Hyderabad campus, Hyderabad on Sunday, she said- "the Union government has been trying to spend six percent of GDP on education but for one reason or the other, it could not cross three percent. The government was able to initiate many flagship programmes in the last few years. I strongly suggest the public spending on educations must go up. This does not mean taxing the public but the spending by other agencies like state governments, private institutions, industry etc. Especially, the states' spending should grow" Stating that the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), which is currently 18 percent, shall increase, the Minister said- "This is abysmally low since the national average itself is 23 percent. If we compare ourselves with some of the countries which have made giant strides in recent times, the mark is even less" she remarked. Lauding the private institutions for doing their best to increase the ratio, she however cautioned that education should not become a commercial activity. For sustainable economic growth, GER should go up, she added. Stressing on skill development and increase in opportunities, Purandeswari said- "We need innovators and this land of ideas shall be converted into a land of opportunities." More than 613 students received their degrees and out of which 561 were under-graduates and 48 higher degree students. Four students received doctorates on the occasion. Purandeswari presented gold medal for best academic performance award to Divya Ravi of Computer eScience while Chetluri Ravi Vishnu Vardhan and Challa Samyukta of Electronics and Communication Engineering got silver and bronze medals respectively. BITS has announced an ambitious growth plan for the next seven years period. Unveiling their targets, Prof BC Jain, Vice-Chancellor expressed confidence that their Vision 2020 and Mission 2015 will make BITs on par with IITs and also one among the top five institutions in Asia. "We are going to spend Rs 450 crores for Project Parivarthan as part of expansion programme for our two new campuses at Hyderabad and Goa. Our focus is totally on technology enablement, research and innovation, faculty orientation, funding research etc. For these things to materialise, we need support from the government as well and if by any means there is shrinkage in that support, we will be in trouble" he said. Shobhana Bhartia, pro-Vice-Chancellor, said the main challenge will be skill �development and urged the centre to increase the budget for higher education. Prof BS Rao, Director of Hyderabad Campus has informed that BITS has revamped and redesigned its curriculum after benchmarking it against the best universities of India and abroad.