By Mehboob Inamdar
Aurangabad, Aug 13:
The education field from primary to higher and technical education field has witnessed progress by leaps and bounds in terms of students, institutes and universities' strength in the district during the last 75 years of Independence.
Joint director of Higher Education Dr Satish Deshpanded that there was only one college in the division until 1950 while today, there are 450 colleges including granted and non-granted.
“The strength of the colleges rose to 60 colleges during the golden jubilee celebration of the country (1997). With the implementation of the permanent non-grant policy from November 2001, the figure for senior colleges rose by 115. Currently, there are more than 300 unaided colleges of Arts, Science, Commerce, Management Science, Education, Law, Physical Education and Fine Arts in Aurangabad, Jalna, Beed and Osmanabad districts,” he said.
There are 120 granted colleges in the division. “The division has traditional, technical, professional, agricultural and education colleges to cater for the need for higher and techical education. Also, the Institute of Chemical Technology, Forensic Science College have started functioning in the recent year in this region,” he added.
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3 universities in district; 450 colleges
There was one only university in the district, that is, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University until 2016. The second university National Law University was started in 2017. MGM Private University which was established in 2019 is the third university in the district. The only district to have three universities in Marathwada and next to Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur and Nashik.
The strength of colleges is 4.50 lakh. Besides polytechnics and Industrial Training Institutes, it also has sub-centres of Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University, Indira Gandhi National Open University, and SNDT Women’s University.
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4.5 K schools with 9.71 L students
Education Officer (Secondary) Madhukar Deshmukh there were only 100 primary and schools in the district when the country got Independence. The district has more than 125 junior colleges with over 30,000 seats.
“The number of schools and students has enhanced in many folds since the Independence. Today, the district has 4,500 Government, private aided and unaided schools of Marathi, Hindi, Urdu and English mediums with 9.71 lakh students. Besides State Board, we have schools affiliated to Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) and even International Baccalaureate (IB),” he said.
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Digital learning, exam
With the spread of Covid, most of the schools epecially from the city taught students online.
A large number of students had to study online for two years first time in history. The actual classes resumed with the decline in Covid patients. Even university and education boards and commissions conducted online examinations.