For the last couple of years, the education sector of India is successful to be one of the most potential employment drivers of the nation. The sector is poised to grow exponentially in the coming decades owing to several factors, the prime of which is the population demographic comprising of more than 550 million people below the age of 25. The strengthening purchasing power of its populace in combination with the want of high career profilehas increased the fervor of Indians towards higher education. On the other hand, the industry is being reinvigorated with raised interests from business conglomerates foraying into the sector. The government policies, with an intention to decrease the gap between the standard of education in India, and its global counterparts, have liberalized the sector opening avenues for Foreign Direct Investments and more international collaborations. Education sector in India is a booming industry with burgeoning career opportunities, the reason for some of the educationists Diaspora to relocating to their motherland.In India, the education sector is on the verge of a massive transformation. The face of education has progressed such that conventional schooling and learning have turned contemporarywith a pro-business approach. In fact, the process has already started with private entities aggressively investing in the sector. The foray of these entities brought a competitive trend to standardized education through modern technology and innovative pedagogy, ultimately benefitting the students. The sector, in contrast to what it was decades back, is on the way to grow as an industry or commercial segment. Presently, 25% of educational setups in the country comprises of private players. This transformation has substantiated an array of career opportunities in the segment apart from teaching or related to teaching.These new range of career includes marketing and management such as financial management, teacher life cycle management as well as fields like curriculum development. The industry is through a massive requirement of human resources in these domains besides core educators.An IBEF, Indian Brand Equity Foundation, report suggests that there are more than 1.4 million schools and more than 35,000 higher educational institutes in the country. Furthermore, the online educational market has carved out a separate niche within the sector. In fact, India attracting educationists from abroad is quite conventional against the backdrop of the country being the proprietorof one of the largest higher educational system in the world. Distance education lately, is through a huge impetus with the online market, which is poised to grow into a market of 40 billion by 2017. Additionally, vocational education and training is emerging as a lucrative sector for educators.The higher education segment is booming in the nation. Reports have suggested that educators with experience more than 7 to 12 years are gaining better traction. Most of the educationists relocating to India are in to higher education segment. Private sectors, again, in this field has been instrumental in substantiating this "Brain Gain". Indian educators residing abroad are attracted by similar opportunities and earning options in the country. Most of the private universities and institutes offer much better salary as per Indian standards that become comparable to their pay grads at foreign institutes. Hence, returning to their homeland has been much rewarding, reinforced by higher earnings. On the other hand, the prospects of venturing their own enterprises have been another lucrative aspect. As new educational setups in the nation is now the need of the hour. Experienced individuals earning good amounts can venture their own institutes, turning educationist cum entrepreneurs.One's own country is always soughed after by mostIndian immigrants. Indians travel abroad in search of good opportunities and life style, which they could not afford living in India. However, the changed economic dynamics have enabled the country to attract these people who settled abroad in search of better career options. Now, when those opportunities are being gradually actualized in their own country, they have no reason to be tagged as immigrants in foreign lands despite of similar opportunities offered here. Moreover, professionals returning to the country aresynonymous to giving back to the nation.The author, Kalpesh Banker, is founder and managing partner of EduShine Advisory Group
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WNS, business process management (BPM) services provider firm, on Wednesday launched a training programme for college students, based on the NASSCOM Qualification Packs (QP) to improve employability and enable them to be industry-ready.With a focus on Tier 2 and 3 cities, this programme aims to train 1,000 students in next six months across 35 colleges in Nasik, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Pune, Kaziranga, Chandigarh and Vizag.Keshav R. Murugesh, Group CEO, WNS and Chairman, NASSCOM BPM Council said, "From our experience, we realised students from tier 2 and tier 3 cities are not able to get through the employment selection process due to lack of English language communication skills and soft-skills. In this programme, we are making sure that students undergo English and soft-skills training so that they don't miss out on global career opportunities due to such shortcomings".The training programme has 80-hour long curriculum spread over two months that will enable students to join specialist roles in the BPM industry. Also, WNS will impart training in English, Excel and Soft-Skills to students. The curriculum will cover knowledge of Accounts Payable and Receivables (guided by NASSCOM's QP standards) - duration of 52 hours; Business Skills (Communication, Business Communication, Business Context, Planning, Organizing and Analytical Thinking Skills) - 18 hours and training in Excel - 10 hours."The Indian BPM industry is today completely different from the traditional BPO set-up. It includes careers for specialists such as CAs, MBAs, Doctors, Medical practitioners and so on. The industry also runs processes using high-end technology and analytics. With a goal of delivering $50 Billion by 2020 to the Indian economy, the industry needs more employable talent," added Murugesh.(BW Online Bureau)
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By Kankana Roy ChoudhuryParents in general and Indian parents in particular are known to be obsessed with their children's academic success. Ensuring that our children finish top of their class feels like something passed down the generations in our country. Being part of the country's academic elite has its benefits given the shortage of seats in coveted institutions. A lot of students going abroad, often do so cause they couldn't make the cut for their preferred domestic options.While the economic merit in pursuing certain courses abroad makes for an entirely different article, in this piece we take a look at the economic argument for why craving the best institutions is not out of place.To do so, we took a look at various courses in India across institutes and compared the fee structure and typical job prospects to understand how long would it take a student to recover his/her course fee, based on the institute type and the expected starting salary (industry average). Admittedly these are averages and there are probably several exceptions to these, but the idea is to illustrate the disparity.We took 5 different disciplines and looked at the cost of education as a combination of the course fee plus basic living expenses (like hostel and mess fees etc) and then looked at average salaries people get upon graduating from these programs. We split institutes up by type / tier, based on the rankings by top publications. The premier and tier I are those that rank among the top 10, while tier-2 includes from 11-20. The last column is derived by dividing the course fee by the annual starting salary and is the number of years it takes the student to earn back / pay off the course fee. Click here to view enlarges graphic An MBA course from the country's premier business school costs around Rs 19 lakh. The institute gives you an easy entry to the world of high-paying jobs. The average salary of a fresher is around Rs 12-15 lakh. This means you can recover the money in a year or so.The same course pursued from a tier II college/university is likely to cost around Rs 16 lakh, while the average salary, in this case, will stand at around Rs 8-10 lakh. The tenure for the recovery increases to 1.6 years.An engineering course from India's best institutes costs around Rs 6-7 lakh, which a student can recover within 7-8 months of starting a job. However, he or she may take around three years to get back the invested amount in the case of a tier II college.The trend is similar in other courses as well. A one-year diploma course (inclusive all) in mass communication and journalism from a government-sponsored institute costs around Rs 1 lakh, while it can go up to Rs 5 lakh from a private institute. A two-year masters programme in the same course costs upwards of Rs 12 lakh, whereas the average salary hovers around Rs 2-3.5 lakh.Thus, the tenure to recover the cost would vary from 6 months to around 3 years depending upon the institute.In all the abovementioned scenarios, we distinctly see that the return on investment is way better in case of premier, most often government-sponsored institutes. You are paying only half the fees being charged at private universities, while the payoffs are better. It's therefore hard to fault parents and students alike for wanting to do everything they possibly can to get into the best institutesAs a country though, it deserves a closer look. Why is higher education as in the cases seen above being subsidized. Even if subsidies have come down, is there not a valid case for charging full price and striving to improve the quality of each course consistently? Isn't the money better spent in subsidizing primary education and vocational training that will further the cause of key campaigns like Make In India?For some reason, the current discourse seems to focus on a coherent land acquisition policy as the only impediment to making things in this country. How about availability of quality talent, which most businessmen constantly grumble about?Not all who secure admission in the top colleges come from economically weak backgrounds. For all those who have the merit but not the means, grants and scholarship programmes should be made easily available. The government should also help them get education loans at lower interest rates, which students can pay off in easy installments and claim tax benefits.The author, Kankana Roy Choudhury, is content head at BigDecisions.com
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Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) India on Friday (18 September) announceed that it has launched its e-library – Library Unplugged, specially designed for school librarians.Sarvesh Shrivastava, MD, EB South Asia said, “With our e-library solution we propose to unplug the library and transform it into an active learning resource by bringing it into the classroom and the home. Costly reference titles which were limited by the number of print copies can now become part of the learning process in e-book form with unlimited copies. Teachers can introduce project- and research-based assignments to students without worrying about the age appropriateness, authenticity and safety of the content.”The occasion witnessed the congress of renowned principals and librarians from over 50 prestigious schools of the Region and luminaries in the education space.Library Unplugged offers 1000+ reference titles to assist curricular learning and covers a wide range of subject areas. In November, 2014 the pilot project of the same was also conferred with the Skoch Order-of-Merit during the 38th Skoch Summit.With the launch of the “Library Unplugged” solution for schools, Britannica has embarked on a journey where globally acclaimed subject reference titles will no longer be confined to the four walls of a traditional library.Through Britannica’s e- library eBooks will now be accessible 24*7 via any device (laptop, desktop, tablet pc or smartphone) keeping in tune with the needs of learners today.(BW Online Bureau)
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Test preparation firm, Career Power, has been entrusted the responsibility to organise a training workshop for SC/ST and minority students appearing for the forthcoming IBPS PO exams by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS).Through this six days long pre-exam training, company will be training about 5000 students in Delhi NCR and 7000 in Gujarat. Trainers at Career Power are subject matter experts in their respective fields who have helped about 1200 students to qualify for the IBPS PO examinations and 200 in SBI PO in FY14-15.With the tentative number of vacancies in IBPS PO for FY15-16 expecting to be around 22,000 - 24,000, such exams have become highly competitive in nature for students across the nations and trainings are highly mandatory to prepare the potential aspirants enabling them to kiss success in the upcoming exams.Founded by a team of IIT and IIM alumni in 2010, with more than 65 branches across India, Career Power is one of the largest company providing coaching classes for bank exams.(BW Online Bureau)
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Visual analytics firm Qlik, has announced a supplemental offering 'Qlik Continuous Classroom' a new 24/7 subscription-based, self-service learning platform for Qlik Sense.The Qlik Continuous Classroom education package includes Videos with interactive exercises and quizzes – users decide when to start, stop, and resume as often as needed; ability to interact directly with instructors and peer students, leveraging web conferencing tools and forums to quickly get answers as well as share best practices; Virtual office hours for immediate support; and One-to-many instructor-led virtual training, allowing whole teams to arrange an instructor-led live Webinar course customized to their needs.Qlik provides users with a new way to learn that allows them to completely customize their learning journey based on their individual needs. Users can choose from dozens of modules equivalent to approximately 25 hours of work, with topics ranging from “Foundations of Building Visualizations” to ”Build and Play Stories”. “We at Qlik are always challenging ourselves with how we can make the experience with our product the very best for any type of user with different learning styles. With an intuitive self-service product like Qlik Sense we wanted the learning process to accelerate user success,” said Kevin Hanegan, vice president of Knowledge and Learning at Qlik. “Qlik Continuous Classroom is modular to accommodate someone who is only just beginning with analytics or wants to increase their skills in creating apps and best practice visualizations.”(BW Online Bureau)
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In India, the e-learning space is still at a nascent stage. Premier education company Talentedge's CEO and MD Aditya Malik talks about the learning company's plan to provide the cutting-edge technology in education system. Talentedge works with both students and professionals offering quality education through innovative approaches. Speaking to BW | Businessworld's Haider Ali Khan, Malik says online education players have a critical role to play as far as realisation of the Digital India dream is concerned. Excerpts from the interview: On Indian Education SystemIndia is an important educational hub for the global education industry. Currently, it boasts of more than 1.4 million schools and more than 35,000 higher education institutes making it one of the largest higher education centre in the world. It is estimated to be worth Rs 5.9 trillion in 2014-15, with nearly half the population of India below the age of 25.The education sector encompasses three domains — primary, higher education and vocational education and operated under a highly regulated policy regime. Each of these are growing and receiving a lot of governmental impetus to sustain the momentum of growth. The scope of growth is huge and the government emphasis should remain on building infrastructure, upping scalability, enhancing the teacher student ratio in the bigger scheme of things. Digital education is going to play a key role in changing the status quo of education in India, allowing people to learn from anywhere at any time. Addressing some of the key loopholes in the education system of India such as flexibility, affordability, scalability, student teacher ratio, I can see education moving towards digital and being more accepting of it as a format. Digital education cannot replace brick and motor format of learning. Both can complement each other. Talentedge's PositionTalentedge was incubated by Lumis Partners in 2012 with the objective of changing the way of learning. We realised the potential of the learning market in India, which lacked technology interventions. Flexibility to learn while you earn was also a hindrance as new age professionals are constantly seeking ways to enhance their skills.Thus we brourht the idea of Talentedge, which is an innovative learning solutions provider that creates tangible impact in an individual’s life. Our products and services are targeted at individuals and corporates to enable learning with a purpose and instill a sense of self-belief, while showcasing a direct link to career progression and job effectiveness. For the individual learners, we offer learning solutions via – premium executive programmes and degree programme and for the corporate world we have solutions like industry programmes, product modules and end user learning. On Capital We are running at an annualised run rate of $8 million. My aim is to grow it by 20 per cent this year and we are also avidly looking at enhancing our footprint further. On Technology Technology is restricted in a certain section of society. However, I see it also the only medium that can help us overcome the bigger barriers that the society and education face today. Hence, as a nation, our focus should be on: a) Building a digital ecosystem that is scalable, low-cost and reusable.b) Generating multiple avenues for learners to adapt to the technology and its usage. A clear mission that popularises this medium in tier 2 and 3 cities.c) Proactively creating awareness regarding the digital learning culture across the nation and government impetus from time to time.d) Empowering an e-learning system that goes beyond the traditional e-learning mechanism of recorded lectures, is highly interactive, engaging and measures learning effectiveness. On Learning PatternTechnology is the harbinger of transformation in every industry. It has changed us into a digitized nation. The resilient focus of the Modi government on technology via – Digital India, Skill India, and Make in India is a testimony to that. Technology has positively progressed the education landscape of India. While e-learning has begun to stand out, there are challenges that continue to obstruct its full potential. Indians are inclined towards the brick and mortar format of leaning, and the e-learning industry is still gaining acceptance. Technology has providing scalable solution to the education industry meet the challenge of accessibility, flexibility and affordability. It empowered the audience to learn at their own pace anytime and anywhere. As we see it at Talentedge – our technology direct to device is all about changing the way India learns. We are enabling an interactive and social collaborative learning experience in the digital space.
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Cambridge English Language Assessment has chosen Flinnt, communication & sharing app for educational institutions to create its m-learning network for Language Teachers across India.English teachers from schools as well as colleges are members of this communication and sharing app where they can connect with each other, share their ideas and opinions. Already more than 700 educators from these institutions have joined the network and are accessing the resources curated by Cambridge English and they are also sharing their own teaching learning practices. Some of these educators are working in institutions that have already adopted Flinnt for their students and in these cases, the educators are able to easily forward the learning resources to the students preparing for the Qualifications offered by Cambridge English.Cambridge English Language Assessment has launched competition for English Teachers. To be accessed through the application both online or though mobile, the competition will target the teachers of Schools and Higher Education segment. Teachers are invited to register for the competition at www.cambridgeenglish.org/in/teachers-competition that will provide them access to the online/mobile network platform.The entries for the competition have to be submitted only through this application. The competition involves the teacher to develop an innovative and original classroom activity for any one of the four skills Listening, Reading, Writing & Speaking.(BW Online Bureau)
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