India-based Global Education Institute CEO Bats for Edtech Startups & Smoother Govt Regulations Six years into his post, S Vaitheeswaran is the driving force behind Manipal Global Education Services' aggressive procurement of new technologies into their system

While running an education empire today, one needs to keep tabs that the graduating students not only have the access to the latest curriculum assets but also ensure that they armed with skills to ensure employability post the education.

Six years into his post, S Vaitheeswaran is the driving force behind Manipal Global Education Services' aggressive procurement of new technologies into their system. Vaitheeswaran is responsible for identifying and building future growth engines, including new campuses, investments and acquisitions. He has launched major initiatives to expand Manipal Global's footprint in ASEAN countries with Malaysia as the hub, and in Middle East and Africa with Dubai as the hub.

Vaitheeswaran, who hails from the manufacturing industry at large, spoke to Entrepreneur about the sense of satisfaction that comes from educating the youth and the impact of new age start-ups in the education domain.

"Edtech start-ups are doing a fantastic job!'

Talking about the influence of start-ups in education Vaitheeswaran said "I think if you breakup the various components of the edtech start-ups and only focus on the learning component; how can you improve the learning ability of the young adult or a kid; the ability of making them learn amid the various distractions and the short time span available, that is something where start-ups are doing a fantastic job,"

Content remains the same but the way it's being taught could be very different and that's what helps to transform the youth in terms of their learning ability, he adds

Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE) is a leading international provider of high-quality higher education services. As a leader in the higher education industry, MaGE believes that industry relevance is imperative for career-focused education in India.

Headquartered in Bangalore, Manipal Global provides a wide range of higher education services to institutions in India. These include corporate training programmes in partnership with leading enterprises, vocational training across a number of sectors, as well as technology-driven services in areas such as testing and education delivery.

Amalgamating new technology, ideas into the system

Speaking about the relevance of amalgamating new-age technologies with traditional education system, Vaitheeswaran believes that from a learning standpoint, if an education body is not willing to migrate into new age learning methodologies, the basic education learnt earlier does not have any relevance today.

Vaitheeswaran has more than 30 years of rich corporate experience, spanning from sales and marketing, supply chain management, operations, to global marketing. Before he joined Manipal Global, Vaitheeswaran led the Hi-Tech and Manufacturing Vertical of Infosys' BPO Unit and also the India Business vertical.

While the Indian IT Services are seeing jobs vigorously axed across domains, there has been a lot of chatter about the choices and the quality of education provided by large institutes today.

Vaitheeswaran said that there must be certain level of basic education that all the colleges and universities must provide to make us an overall competent individual. "At the same time there must be an interface of what the jobs mean today. And that keeps rapidly changing today. The responsibility is both ways – the government will have to change in curriculum design and syllabus and the industry must also actively participate in asking for these changes to incorporate in the curriculum and participate in making these easily available to education institutions," he adds.

Lower regulations

Speaking about the central and state government's role in education business in India Vaitheeswaran stressed on lesser regulations in higher education. "There must be a framework which the government is responsible for and they must be differential treatment on how they treat a platinum university versus a basic-level university – on approvals, speed of decision making and more,"

"The government is starting something on international ratings – we expect a higher rated university should get greater benefits; not financial benefits but benefits to take decisions by themselves, less control over them, less regulatory interventions and more," he adds.

The government must encourage more good quality private players to come in and we must have a larger choice to students. All the ratings and government should disclose to students to help them make a wiser choice, Vaitheeswaran adds.

He also said that private players should be allowed to compete in the given arena of what they want to do where they take care of the issue of employability and produce good quality students who get good jobs, he adds.

MaGE today is a dedicated service provider/operator of university campuses in Malaysia, Antigua in the Caribbean, Dubai and Nepal. It services and supports over 400,000 students, many of them through its award-winning large-scale technology platform, EduNxt.