Philosophy and Origins

As we approach the Twentyfirst Century, a number of major challenges face women and men around the world as they interact with one another as individuals, groups, and with nature. Globalisation of trade, of production, and of communications has created a highly interconnected world. Yet the tremendous gaps between the rich and the poor continue to widen both within, and between nations. Sustainable development remains an elusive long-term goal, too often sacrificed for short-term gains.

It is imperative that higher education offer solutions to existing problems and innovate to avoid problems in the future. Whether in the economic, political, or social realms, higher education is expected to contribute to raising the overall quality of life, worldwide. To fulfil its role effectively and maintain excellence, higher education must become far more internationalised; it must integrate an international and intercultural dimension into its teaching, research, and service functions.

Education is the largest single activity in the world, involving over 1000 million students and 50 million teachers at all levels, not counting millions of others in educational support activities. But its importance stems not merely from its size but also from its role as institutionalized knowledge - the principal repository, producer, disseminator and transmission belt of all forms of knowledge.

The most significant feature of education for mother earth protection in the 21st century is not so much what the French call li explosion scolarie, but the knowledge explosion, which has expanded the catchment areas of learning so fast that it takes only a few years now for the state-of-the-art in any field to become obsolete. Different modes and types of communicating for advancement of knowledge are fast changing and becoming more than sophisticated. In this technological era knowledge can easily be dispensed technologically and electronically. Teachers and formal school structures are becoming less important, and the conventional age limits on the learning process are becoming blurred.

Viewing the urgent need for mutual and technical cooperation among the Universities in India, exchange of information, export and import of educational know-how and consultancy, control on duplication of efforts and wastage in higher education, vocationalisation of existing careers besides strengthening the financial health of the existing Universities for implementing educational programmes having social, cultural, technical, economic and positive contents for the optimum development of our country, the "Confederation of Indian Universities (CIU)" has been established with the co-sponsorship of selected university level institutions in India.

The Confederation of Indian Universities has envisaged a masterplan paradigm based on the meetings held in January, February and March 2004 under the Chairmanship of Prof. K. Venkatasubramanian, the then Member of the Planning Commission, Government of India. The Confederation of Indian Universities was established at the behest of Prof. K. Venkatasubramanian for uniting all the university level institutions in India with a view to optimising their available resources and for mutual as well as technical cooperation among the universities for exchange of ideas and for mitigating the disastrous effects of the duplication of efforts and wastage in education.

Released by the President of CIU, Dr. P R Trivedi (www.prtrivedi.com)