Maharashtra’s second dedicated sports university will come up in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, after the first one that started in Pune’s Balewadi last year. The government has formed a nine-member expert committee to prepare an Act to govern it along with planning of courses to be offered, infrastructure to be built.
It will be named Sports University, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, and will work towards creating manpower for the sports industry which is more than creating sportsmen. While it will offer several multidisciplinary courses in niche sports areas such as nutritionists, trainers, coaches, managers, commentators, journalists among all, the university will simultaneously provide tailor-made courses on regular academics.
The committee, which includes various academic and sports experts, is headed by Dr Manikrao Salunkhe, former Vice Chancellor of Shivaji University, Kolhapur. “First point of focus for the committee will be to prepare the legal structure which is the Act that will govern the university.
Most Read
India vs South Africa, World Cup 2023 Highlights: Kohli’s century, Jadeja’s fifer help India beat South Africa by 243 runs
When Gulzar sat silently with Tabu for one hour, offered her Maachis after that: ‘This relationship impacted my life the most’
See More
While there is already one in existence after formation of first sports university in Pune’s Balewadi, there will have to be some changes, considering that Balewadi already had a set of infrastructure,” said Dr Salunkhe, who was part of the committee that formed the first sports university in Balewadi.
While the committee has three months to prepare the plan, the government aims to open it for admissions in the next academic year. Dr. Salunkhe, said, “With implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the sports university shall have interdisciplinary courses in all sport-allied sectors. There is ever-increasing interest in this sector with various games gaining popularity. Apart from the players of the game, there is an entire ecosystem which runs the sector. The sports university will work towards creating trained manpower for it.”
This university will also offer tailor-made regular academic courses for sportsmen who will be able to complete their graduation, while focusing on their games. “Most youngsters who are professionally training for a certain sport, tend to lag behind in academics. We plan to prepare customised courses for such players which they can comfortably complete with hybrid mode of online-offline type of learning. This way they will get to secure their Plan B while focusing on becoming a successful sportsman,” said Dr Anil Karnik, former professor and HOD of Chemistry department at Mumbai University who too is part of the committee.
