courses and initiatives more relevant to the needs of society. Such curricula flexibility would enable enhancement of the quality of knowledge produced by the university about communities and also help create new programmes. This includes various forms of incorporating community engagement and linking teaching, research and practice to better reflect the following: Linking learning with community service Linking research with community knowledge Knowledge sharing and Knowledge mobilization Devising new curricula and courses as well as focus on pedagogy Including practitioners as teachers Social Innovations by students IV Crediting Community Engagement in Higher Education institutions: Credits for community engagement in Universities and other Higher Education institutions should be encouraged in conducting evaluations. This includes credits for teachers, students and visiting faculties who choose to engage in community based work and perform vital roles of public intellectual engagement. Student-initiated community engagement work (including internships, fellowships, course-work) should be particularly encouraged to leverage the dynamism and idealism of youth. New Community Institutions: It is also necessary to establish a few educational institutions which will primarily engage in community based and commons knowledge traditions. These institutions can be in vital aspects of community health, community cultures (arts, crafts, music etc), community practices in sustainable development/ natural resources, and other aspects of community knowledge production, application and dissemination. The Next Steps As the themes of ‘fostering social responsibility and strengthening community engagement’ in higher education are relatively new as elaborated in this document, the Member, Planning Commission responsible for education convened a consultation to identify some concrete next steps to take this agenda forward in the country. Several ideas for follow-up emerged from the same: 1. Since the Report of the Sub-committee on ‘Strengthening Community Engagement in Higher Education’ (set up by the Planning Commission in 2011) contained very pertinent
7. The experiences of participants indicated the need for facilitating sustained involvement of colleges and other institutions of higher education, in partnership with civil society, to contribute to planning, monitoring and evaluation of various centrally sponsored schemes of the government. It was recommended that the Planning Commission may convene a meeting of such focal ministries to deliberate on such options. Annexure 1 No.M-12015/20/2011-HRD Planning Commission Yojana Bhavan, Sansad Marg, New Delhi-110001 Dated: 14th September 2011 ORDER Subject: Formulation of the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17) – Sub-committee Strengthen Community Engagement of Higher Education Institutions – regarding. In recent years, higher education has isolated itself from the society resulting in breakdown of this vital social contract. There is a need to launch a campaign to re-establish and strengthen higher education’s close linkages with the society through a well-coordinated approach going way beyond the prevailing National Service Scheme (NSS). Universities and colleges should be encouraged to engage more intensively than before with wider society and contribute to the local and regional development and provide intellectual leadership to society. Therefore in terms of decision taken in the meeting of the Steering Committee for Higher Education and Technical Education on 25 August 2011 to constitute sub-committees on cross-cutting issues, it has been decided to set up a Sub-committee to Strengthen Community Engagement of Higher Education Institutions. The composition of the Sub-committee is as under -