‘Role of university far larger than what happens in classrooms’

Ahmedabad University vice-chancellor Pankaj Chandra Wednesday said the role of a university or academics was "much larger than what happens in a classroom". Speaking at the discussion of the book, Navigating the Labyrinth: Perspectives on India’s Higher Education, published by Orient Blackswan, at the India Habitat Centre, he said, "Universities are socio-cultural organisations. They are not bureaucratic structures or commercial organisations, and managing them is all about managing people. When education started to expand in the 1960s and 1970s, we expanded so rapidly, that with a larger number of people you had to standardise everything, from the learning processes to the certification processes."