Edu-leaders

The Problem

While that is an impressive line-up, only a fraction of them are found to have the requisite skills to execute jobs in the industry. So, the problem is of neither lack of job opportunities nor availability of qualified candidates, but one of employability due to huge gaps in skills.

According to The Rao Committee Report of 2003, this gap has arisen in recent years because of the mushrooming of a large number of private technical institutions
and polytechnics. “Barring some exceptions, there is scant regard for maintenance of standards,” the report said. There is no regulating body that assures that these colleges and universities follow a certain standard of education. Often these institutes have unqualified instructors and inadequate infrastructure, raising many concerns regarding quality. And the students passing out of these institutes face several problems at the time of recruitment, such as lack of knowledge of interview techniques and inability to express the knowledge gained, among other things. “We find that most graduates are shaky on even the most fundamental concepts in their field of study.

Even those with a technical degree often have had no access to computers and hence lack basic programming knowledge. Their English competency is so poor that they
are often unable to carry on a simple conversation,” says Dr Shantanu Paul, CEO and MD of Hyderabad-based TalentSprint, which trains technical and management graduates in employable skills. Little wonder then, that the current employability rate is 26 percent for engineering graduates and 10 to 15 percent for other graduates,
according to NASSCOM.

The common issue that all of us face among prospective employees is lack of relevant skills and “hands-on” experience. Their knowledge is more theoretical and they find it challenging when it comes to putting theory to practice. Besides technical competence we also experience gap in areas such as communication skills, interpersonal skills, problem solving ability, analytical ability, creative and lateral thinking, planning and organising,” says Sumedha Nashikkar, Head – HR, KPIT Cummins.

Many a time it is seen that even technically sound candidates have poor social and behaviour skills that the industry needs, like negotiation and conflict management, ability to work under pressure and being assertive when dealing with people. “One of the first things that we do in our programmes is to get people to ask questions. Most of them just say ‘yes’ to whatever they are told, don’t make eyecontact, which can be interpreted as’not trustworthy’ by the foreign partners,” says Aparna Prabhudesai, proprietor of Bodhivriksh, a soft and behaviour skills training firm.

Not just at the centre, but the skills
agenda has become a top priority
even at the State government level.
“We are following a two-fold method
to enable our college and university
students for the industry–
revision of the core curriculum
with the help of industry and academicians
and short-term courses
in soft skills like communication
and employability skills specific to
domains like IT, Banking, insurance,
sales, computer literacy,
tourism and hospitality,” says Dr.
C. Bhanumathi, Director, Institute
of Service Management, Andhra
Pradesh State Council of Higher
Education (APSCHE).
The state government body has
already revised the curriculum of
26 subjects in the science and
commerce streams and made it
compulsory for all government
colleges to have a multimedia lab
for teaching communication in
English. APSCHE also holds
“career awareness and recruitment
drives” at all universities and
district headquarters, where
industry officials are invited to talk
about the opportunities and skillsets
required in different domains.
“The strike rate has gone up from
three-four percent in 2006 to 8-9
percent this year at these job fairs,”
says Dr Bhanumathi.
Right Course
“Employability of our graduates
would improve in the next 4 to 5
years, when the MHRD implements
all the reforms it is planning–
compulsory accreditation,
making the curriculum more current,
empowering HEIs with
autonomy, enhancing the quality of
faculty and research and there is far
more academia-industry interaction,”
says Som Mittal, President,
NASSCOM.
Industry leaders also feel the need
for changing our archaic examination
pattern of “questions and
answers”, which is mostly based on
memorising things/rote learning.

Training Issues

In a good learning environment, students develop these skills automatically. However, in most educational institutions that environment is found missing. So, industry has to invest huge amounts of time and money on training its freshers. According to NASSCOM, the average training spend for Indian IT firms on a new recruit, to make up for his/her inadequate skills, is over $ 4,350, 40 percent of the cost of an average engineering course.

The auto and engineering sector have to run their graduate trainee programmes for around a year, before the engineers they recruit start becoming productive. Many companies run comprehensive in-house programmes for training employees, which include not only technical courses, such as software programming, but also those focused on imparting soft and behaviour skills, such as leadership, business communication, e-mail etiquette, personality development and presentation skills.

In addition to these, many companies allow employees to enroll for certification courses to improve their skill sets for the future. “It is not enough to solve a problem technically. A guy should know how to critically analyse a problem and diffuse issues independently,” says Lokesh Mehra, Regional Manager–Corporate Responsibility, Cisco–South Asia. It is these very skills that his company trains students in, in a simulated environment of the actual job scenario, before providing technology certifications. However, not everyone can invest billions of rupees in setting up sprawling training campuses like Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Cognizant;
and they look at investors to take the load off. It is to fulfill this need to bridge the skills gap and deliver ‘industry-ready’ products that a host of independent training
companies and finishing schools have come up in the last decade.

“Apart from technical and soft skills, another critical piece missing in the puzzle is that little or no exposure to the business side of technology at the campus level.
This is where we come in,” says Navyug Mohnot, CEO of QAI, a software skills training company. His company is working with companies like Infosys, Wipro and Cognizant and higher education institutes (HEIs) like IIT Delhi and Symbiosis by offering focused training in business critical skills in the software industry, like project management, process management, people management and IT service management.

The most cited reasons for the glaring gap in skill-sets of students passing out of Indian HEIs is outdated curricula and not enough industry participation in academia. “There is a need for the Industry to take active interest in the educational institutions where their potential employees are groomed and be involved in their development process. This will cut down on the Industry’s training costs and they will be able to get candidates who can deliver to their expectations from day one,” says Dr H.S. Ballal, Pro Chancellor of Manipal University.

Forging Alliances

 For such “tailor-made employees”, many companies across different sectors are entering into partnershipswith HEIs. Leading retail conglomerate, Future Group, has joined hands with 16 MBA colleges which offer two-year retail management programmes. That gives it an almost captive talent pool, which is productive from day one. “We interact with the students before they join the course and during the course, as they work with us 4-5 times in a year. So, they do not require any additional training when they join us,” says Sanjay Jog, Chief People Officer of Future Group.

 

The IT industry is among the most proactive in entering industry-academia partnerships. Infosys engages with over 400 colleges through its Campus Connect programme,while Zensar has exclusively tied up with 13 colleges under its Centres of Excellence (COE) programme where its technical managers actively engage in distance learning modules for third— year engineering students. “This is where some of our best hires come from,” says Mehrotra.

KPIT Cummins, through its PACE programme, creates project banks and sponsors projects for the final year students; conducts special workshops for students at college campuses in soft skills and process related training including basics of six sigma methodology. “We also participate in sharing our views with education bodies to align curriculum with industry needs,” says Nashikkar.

As part of its Educational Institutions Alliance Program, HCL Technologies has launched HCL K2 Academy, which is partnering with universities to train students in contemporary technologies, projects, industry exposure through principal workshops by Microsoft, Oracle and Redhat.

Many companies like HCL and KPIT also encourage students to spend a day at their campuses and give them an opportunity to interact with people on the ground. Some believe in catching them really young. Infosys, for instance, provides IT exposure to students of urban high schools through a two-week summer vacation programme at its development centres.

For HEIs, these partnerships mean improvement in the technical know-how, professional competency and skill sets of their students, making them more employable. Amity has such tie-ups with Nokia Siemens and Cisco, while College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) has MoUs with IBM, John Deere and Wipro, wherein the industry partners train their students as per industry needs and help in updating curriculum. Similarly, Manipal has an academic Alliance with SAP U Academy for SAP Certification and a collaboration with Phillips for Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) project related training.

Some companies also provide summer internship training in their organisations as well as live projects to final year students, which helps them gain practical knowledge in their domain area.

 

 

Government Initiatives

Government is also gearing up to increasingly involve industry in the learning process at HEIs. “We have a sub-mission on skills development, which is assisting the State governments in creating 1000 new Polytechnics—300 in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Mode, 300 in the private mode and 400 in the public mode. In the Polytechnics set up in the PPP mode, the private partner is expected to bring in the industry experience. The private ones would anyway be run by the industry people, who will automatically ensure that the students are trained in industry-relevant skills,” says NK Sinha, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), Government of India.

The Ministry is also trying to get a management committee instituted, which would be chaired by a person from the industry. “The idea is to encourage more and more
integration of technical education with the industry,” says Sinha. Further, it has a plan to embed Polytechnics within engineering colleges to make technical education
more cohesively linked to industry needs. The idea is to rewrite curricula in the Polytechnics for specific skill needs, tailored for specific industry requirements.

AICTE is already on the job. To be eligible for Phase Two of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme that the government has introduced with the World Bank funding, engineering colleges have to improve learning outcomes and employability of their graduates by modernising curricula and level of pedagogy to suit the industry
requirement. Another government initiative in the pipeline is ‘National Vocational Qualification Framework’, wherein standards of the programmes, institutes and competencies required for each vocation will be laid down and the learning pathways for each defined. “This will enable a number of vocational institutes oriented towards specific set of skills come up and offer specialised programmes in tandem with what the industry requires,” says a senior official in MHRD.

According to the official, making accreditation mandatory will help employers get clarity on where graduates of a particular institution stand and the additional skills’
training they would require. Not just at the centre, but the skills agenda has become a top priority even at the State government level. “We are following a two-fold method to enable our college and university students for the industry–revision of the core curriculum with the help of industry and academicians and short-term courses
in soft skills like communication and employability skills specific to domains like IT, Banking, insurance, sales, computer literacy, tourism and hospitality,” says Dr. C. Bhanumathi, Director, Institute of Service Management, Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE).

The state government body has already revised the curriculum of 26 subjects in the science and commerce streams and made it compulsory for all government colleges to have a multimedia lab for teaching communication in English. APSCHE also holds “career awareness and recruitment drives” at all universities and district headquarters, where industry officials are invited to talk about the opportunities and skill sets required in different domains. “The strike rate has gone up from three-four percent in 2006 to 8-9 percent this year at these job fairs,” says Dr Bhanumathi.

Right Course

“Employability of our graduates would improve in the next 4 to 5 years, when the MHRD implements all the reforms it is planning–compulsory accreditation, making the curriculum more current, empowering HEIs with autonomy, enhancing the quality of faculty and research and there is far more academia-industry interaction,”says Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM.

Industry leaders also feel the need for changing our archaic examination pattern of “questions and answers”, which is mostly based on memorising things/rote learning. “If we follow the open book examination pattern that involves real life problem situations and make our students think, half the battle is won. This will enable our education system to generate people who can find innovative solutions to problems,” says Nashikkar.

Some HEIs have begun incorporating communication and behavior skills into the course curriculum to give a fillip to their students’ employability. “The course curriculum should be redesigned, as and when required by the industry to make sure the redundant elements no more form a part of the curriculum and topical technology and
relevant topics are incorporated,” says Dr Shukla.

Challenges Ahead
Creating a spirit of intellectual enquiry among students and pedagogical methods for delivery of education in the HEIs, like in the developed nations, is the biggest challenge yet for enhancing employability, according to Dr Arun Nigavekar, former chairman of UGC. “For developing a student’s capacity to think critically and creatively and solve problems independently, you cannot treat skill development as an independent entity with no connection with core subject knowledge. A marriage of the two is necessary,” he said. That is why, despite holding e-Learning programmes in soft skills, interview techniques and computer literacy, some HEIs in smaller cities find it difficult to place their students due to total absence of relevant domain knowledge.

“We have a huge number of students taking up subjects like Hindi and Philosophy, which find no relevance in the industry. While a few of them get into Indian Administrative Service or become lecturers, it is very difficult to find employment for the rest,” says Professor R.G. Harshe, Vice Chancellor of Allahabad University.
The entire initiative of skills building is critical to the success of our country and its economy, as employable human resources would be the key to retain our industries’ competitive advantages and growing stature.

According to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), India needs to build 700 million globally employable work-force, 200 million university graduates and 500 million vocationally skilled people by the year 2022, if it has to realise its potential to become a leading economy globally and be recognised as a centre of knowledge. This ambitious target can be achieved only if all the stakeholders—academia, industry, skills training companies and the government—work in a concerted fashion. Only then can we reap the benefits of our demographic advantage of being one of the youngest nations of the world and become the workforce of the world.