The Higher Education Review

Ashok Mittal

Behind the evolution of the largest Indian Private University is, Ashok Mittal, Chancellor of Lovely Professional University. With a degree in LLB he started his career joining his family's business but soon moved to venture into the automobiles and telecommunications industry. He later moved to higher education because of his passion to bring a change in the Indian society and in the year 2009, he recruited 200 plus teachers from IITs and IIITs to transform Lovely Professional University into a world class university. Presently, he has initiated the largest private scholarship of the country, wherein300+ crores, have been awarded to 20,000 students.

Lovely Professional University is a synonym of quality education holders. What started as an Institute of Management in the year 2001 with just over 200 students is now the largest University of the country. LPU today boasts of being one of the finest universities in India with over 25000 students and 3500 staff members, offering over 200 programs. "Our university was established with a vision to deliver internationally benchmarked curricula, innovative pedagogy, experiential learning and equitable and affordable quality education. What started as a humble beginning for us is now home to students from over 30 countries, offering over 200 programs," says Ashok Mittal, Chancellor, Lovely Professional University.

The LPU experience is aimed to take place both within and outside the classroom, nurturing creativity & innovation through challenging project works, participative learning. This is to help create an environment conducive to sparking ideas and to further translate such ideas into reality. "Experiential learning and live projects play a strong hand in grooming students to be job ready.

On these lines, LPU is working hard to be included in top 200 universities of the world by 2025," says, Mittal.

Since its inception, LPU has enjoyed a healthy track record of launching its students onto successful careers. Proving this is their alumni who are currently working in 300+ Global and Indian brands. Today, some of the top recruiting companies which have reached LPU campus for placements include Cognizant, Google, Microsoft, Infosys, Dell, Samsung, HCL Technologies, IBM, Tech Mahindra, and Dabur to name a few.

What attracts these companies?

"We have all the facilities to ensure that the quality of students who graduate from LPU, turn out to be the most productive human resource availed to the industries," says Mittal. Being at LPU campus, students enjoy world class IT infrastructure, healthy campus facilities, India's largest scholarship schemes, strong international relations, industry endorsement, emphasis on personality development, transparent governance and industry oriented internationally benchmarked curricula.

LPU maintains a full-fledged Division of Career Services to actively reach out to the corporate world for facilitating the best placements of LPU students. Before bringing students and the companies together, students are provided with a number of services to groom them for enhancing employability. The major highlights of these services are, Career Advisory Services, Resume Writing Skills, Job Search Tips, Interview Strategies, Aptitude Development Workshops, Group Discussion Competence, Communication and Presentation Proficiency and Personality Development Techniques. "It also maintains an ongoing corporate hand holding program to place LPU students in business, government or private organizations and ensures a continuing pipeline of placement opportunities," says Mittal.

"On account of strong conceptual foundations, exposure to real-life work conditions, and enhanced capacity to work, there is a good demand for LPU students amongst employers," says Mittal. The vocational focus of many of the courses and industrial trainings help

LPU students to develop maturity and acquire an edge in employability. Industry Experts also come in to provide hands on experience on state-of-the-art tools and licensed software. Today, the university and Industry work collectively for the development of R&D Centre to infuse best practices of the Industry to restructure academia with the needs of the hour.

Realizing its corporate social responsibility, LPU also organizes Joint Campus placement drives so that students from other institutions may also avail the opportunity. Today, the university has tie ups with various industrial bodies for various training and other knowledge related programs. Some of these organizations include names like, Reliance Money, Siemens PLM, Autodesk, Think labs, Confederation of Indian Industries, EMC2, PSCST, LUPIN Pharmaceuticals and Infosys. "We also have a tie-up with Entrepreneurship Development of India. It is for encouraging students and teaches them about other choices they can make if they don't take the placements," reveals Mittal.

The backbone of the institution

How can students gain knowledge, develop skills and enhance values? Academic environment at LPU is shaped by its faculty whose dedicated focus on specialized teaching continuously challenges & inspires students. For perfect academic delivery, LPU believes in recruiting the best faculty. Many of LPU teachers are selected from the best institutes including IITs and the IIITs, and they are renowned for their friendly, open door approach. Teachers bring their passion and enthusiasm for teaching into the classroom providing an intimate, interactive, personalized approach to learning. The university encourages and provides active support to its teaching community to conduct research, publish textbooks and also sponsors them to national and international conferences and workshops. "The university also looks to provides ample opportunities to teachers to nurture their area of specialization by conducting various activities including Faculty Development Programs. They are cutting edge researchers and experts who keep our students updated with the latest global thinking and development," concludes Mittal.