Higher Education and Skills for Life

Higher Education and Skills for life

                                                                                               D.V.Ramana Murthy*

            Higher Education institutions are expected to impart Knowledge, enhance Skills and inculcate right attitudes in the students         It is common for institutions of higher education to impart domain skills in the subject areas . And the students fail in the value orientation, and skill development to face current challenges in life.  This maladjustment is essentially due to the stress and strain that is being experienced by the young learners. Till recently this maladjustment is at a low key but of late it is expanding to cognizable proportions. While the minor maladjustment leads to a loss of interest in learning and gradual withdrawal from learning, when crossing the threshold results   even in disenchantment with life. The suicides on the campuses are an indication of this malady.

The institutions of higher education should take into cognizance this vital issue. One of the effective solutions to this problem is adapting a Life Skills model by the institutions of higher education. Long back UNICEF identified this need and developed a ten point Life Skills model which was proved as very effective, globally, in molding young people. The curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities of each academic program should have an effective interaction of this Life Skills model. This integration enhances

he learning capacities of the learner, improves the value orientation and tones up the skill sets of the learners for future role relations and performance.

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* Senior Faculty, P.G.Dept of Commerce , The Hindu College, Machilipatnam,

   Guest Faculty, Dept of Business Management, Krishna University, Machilipatnam,

   Director & Core Faculty, Attitude+ve, Behavioural Training Solutions, Machilipatnam

The skills for life include

1. Skill of Decision Making:

Taking the right decision at right time decides the destiny of life. Not only a wrong decision causes lot of loss but also a good decision which is not taken in the right time incurs the same kind of loss. So young people should be helped through curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities to develop the ability of decision making in a rational manner.

2. Skill of Problem Solving:

 We all know that life is not a bed of roses. One has to face varied challenges. The rise and fall in ones life is natural. Institutions of higher education should help their young learners to develop proactive abilities in identifying challenges in life- be that of learning, career and personal as well as social. They should be taught in facing the challenges and converting them into opportunities. They should be helped through curricular, co-curricular and extra curricular activities to come out with most effective solutions to the worst pressing problems with the least effort.

3. Skill of Creative Thinking:

Our educational program should be toned up for developing the creative thinking among the young learners. When the young learner is made to move out from a stereotyped mind-set and is enabled to look at the different facets of the situation with a holistic perspective and vivid vision, solutions to challenges crop up abundantly and rest assured in life.

4. Skill of Critical Thinking:

Quite often the young learners are swiped away by the external current but understanding the under current of the given situation is much more important. Facilitating the development of critical thinking in the young learner result in avoiding haste decisions and developing a rational approach towards life.

5. Skill of Effective Communication:

Experiencing a true and meaning life is possible only through effective communication, because life is a web of human relationships. These human relationships are given shape through interpersonal communications. Expressing happiness, sorrowfulness, co-operation, sympathy, empathy, antipathy and differences of opinions, the way they are expressed will define the human relations, their nature and extent. Expressing feelings in a clear, stable, balanced, and etiquetted manner will influence human relations remarkably and help experience the rhythm of life. The academic program should be geared at improving this effective communication skill.

6. Skill of Interpersonal Relationships: 

Life becomes momentous and colorful when human relations are embedded with love, affection, emotional identification and mutual respect. This will fetch up intimate friends and life time well-wishers. In their association and companionship one can be in a state of ecstatic happiness. The academic program should cog itself to foster the positive human relationships among the young learners. 

7. Skill of Self Awareness:

Knowing ones own abilities and trying to improve them continuously, constantly and substantially and identifying ones own weakness consciously and trying to reduce them over a period is the real challenge before the young learner. The academic program of the institutions of the higher education should help its learners to have proper SWOT analysis, so that with the realization of ones  own strengths and weaknesses, identifying the opportunities and sensing the threats to reach the opportunities, our young learners can improve their human resources.

8. Skill of Empathy:

The current millennium has acquired the bad repute of slanting human relations. The socialization process in the contemporary society is failing to instill empathy among humans. Institutions of higher education should play a key facilitator role, because it is the most powerful agent of socialization, to develop empathy among young learners. It is nothing but developing a state of concern among the young learners to respond to the agony as well as ecstasy of fellow learners.

9. Skill of Coping with Emotions:

The ability not to lose balance in agony and ecstasy, in hatred and love, in loss and gain is what is needed in our young friends. When the academic program is switched to equip the young learners in developing the skill of coping with emotions, it not only gives balanced people to the society but also protect them form disenchantment with life.

10. Skill of Coping with Stress:

Stress is universal, now a day. The fear of realization of ones own dreams and desires, getting the co-operation of others, reaching goals and targets is creating tremendous stress on humans in general and young learners in particular. Stress damages confidence, competence and destroys the decision making power resulting in decadence of individuals. Institutions of higher education should help their young learners through their academic activities to identify the stressors and take up challenges with a positive mindset. The young learners should be protected from hyper sensitivity and helped in developing a rationalistic outlook. Here yoga and meditation and weaning away the young learners from the bad habits will help in developing the skill of coping with stress.

Epilogue:

            Mostly the current academic programs of institutions of higher education are purely oriented in academic ways with out integrating them with current needs of the society and realities of the milieu. The system is failing in preparing the learner to face the academic challenges and job preparedness. This topsy-turvy can be corrected when the Life Skills model is adapted. In any academic program there is scope to integrate the 10 principles of Life Skills either through curricular, co-curricular or extra-curricular activities. Unless this is done, the development of human resources in terms of concrete knowledge domain, a virtual value frame work and shrewd skill –sets is not going to become a reality.

The sooner the institutions of higher education recognize this fact and gears up with a Life Skills model, the better it would be possible in developing a tangible human resource base, tan gently- the upwards.