New Delhi, Aug 25 (INB) Academic leaders and education stakeholders on Tuesday called for integrating global leadership programmes into university curricula and providing academic incentives to students to ensure wider participation and completion of such initiatives. Speaking at a roundtable organised by Aspire Institute and Aspiring Leaders India Foundation (ALIF), Senior Advisor, Government of India, Dr Labh Singh said universities need to recognise that even free programmes can contribute meaningfully to their objectives, while finding a balance between institutional revenue models and broader educational missions. Singh said the key challenge for leadership programmes was to establish a distinct value proposition in an increasingly crowded space of initiatives offered by universities and non-government organisations. “When everybody is there, then nobody is there if the effectiveness goes down,” he said, stressing the need for programmes to develop a clear competitive edge. He also pointed to the importance of mentorship for young students, saying senior academics have a responsibility to help bridge the gap between young people and the opportunities available to them. Singh said the association of such programmes with global institutions such as Harvard also played a role in attracting students, but their long-term effectiveness would depend on how well universities integrated them into their academic environment. Sandeep Marwah, Chancellor, Asian Academy of Film and Television (AAFT) said institutions must look beyond imparting academic knowledge and focus on building the careers and character of students. Marwah, who is also the founder of Noida Film City and Marwah Studios, said his institution had deliberately subsidised course fees to make creative education accessible to a larger number of students. “We have to consider them that they are the people who are actually ultimately going to not only run the industry but they are going to run the nation,” he said, referring to students. Marwah said faculty members were central to the success of an institution and expressed willingness to work with Aspire on expanding access to its leadership programme. He also highlighted his institution’s initiative to provide free education to underprivileged children through schools in Noida, saying the broader objective was to “uplift humanity, to uplift education, to support government of India”. Prof Shobhit Mathur, Vice Chancellor, Rishihood University, said there was considerable talent in India that often remained unable to progress because students lacked exposure and the social capital needed to access global opportunities. “Free doesn’t mean always that it is of high quality,” Mathur said, adding that the combination of free access and quality in the Aspire programme was particularly impressive. He said Rishihood University, which was founded with a similar emphasis on accessible education and leadership, would explore ways to integrate the programme more deeply into its curriculum and expose students to Aspire representatives. Another university leader focussed on skill-based education and industry-linked learning, described initiatives aimed at providing education and training to students from humble backgrounds, including programmes combining classroom learning with industry exposure. He said such models had helped students secure internships and employment opportunities. For the roundtable, other key participants included Pro Vice Chancellor LTSU Prof Dr B S Satyal, Harvard Club of India President Ashok Mittal, and Prof NK Goyal.
The participants also discussed the difficulty of ensuring that students complete voluntary programmes alongside their regular academic workload. The Aspire team said universities could address the issue by making participation a requirement or offering academic credits or other incentives. The roundtable focused on the role of senior academic leaders in expanding access to global opportunities, integrating such programmes into existing university structures and building partnerships that can scale leadership development across institutions. The Aspire Leaders Program is a fully funded online leadership development programme for first-generation and limited-income university students and recent graduates. According to Aspire India, it combines leadership education, mentorship, global peer networks and professional-development opportunities.
