Universities must become engines of hill state's growth: CM

Solan, Sep 25 (UNI) In a firm push to reshape higher education into a driver of regional development, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Friday urged Himachal Pradesh's universities to shed their conventional roles as mere "degree-granting factories" and align academic inquiry with the urgent socio-ecological realities of the hill state. Addressing an academic conclave organized by the Himachal Pradesh Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Commission (HPPEIRC), the Chief Minister made an impassioned case for breaking the ivory tower model of academia. Research, he emphasized, must move out of isolated libraries and onto the frontlines of state governance. "Higher education cannot…