Former Director of the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati Professor TG Sitharam has assumed the charge as the Chairman of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Professor Sitharam took over charge from Professor M Jagadesh Kumar, Chairperson, University Grants Commission, who had the additional charge of AICTE since September 2022. Meanwhile with the approval of the Union Minister of Education in his capacity as Chairperson of IIT Council, Professor Parameswar K Iyer took over charge as Officiating Director of IIT Guwahati from Professor Sitharam on December 20.

While assuming his charge as the AICTE Chairman, Professor Sitharam said: “I will work with every stakeholder in Education domain to transform Higher education into large, well resourced, vibrant multidisciplinary providing high quality teaching, innovation, entrepreneurship, research, and community engagement hubs.”

Professor Sitharam, as per an IIT Guwahati statement, envisions providing transformative education to Indian students to create leaders and innovators, and generate new knowledge for a sustainable society.

In his new role, Professor Sitharam aims to make India a global educational knowledge hub with increase in the Gross enrollment ratio in higher education to 50 per cent by 2035 through interventions of AICTE, IIT Guwahati statement added.

For the same, Professor Sitharam envisions creating five types of pathways for competitive, modern and industrialized India including -- Technology driven outcome-based education, Job-creator (JCR) mode, Industry solutions provider (ISP), Innovation, research and startup mode and Education in Indian languages.

In addition to this, the new AICTE Chairman has shared his action plan aligning with long term goals of the Government of India underlined in the National Education Policy 2020.