Technology As Strongest Enabler
As the world ushers in an ultra-advanced period, several organisations are continually changing. Innovation and technology have welcomed this new time by empowering transformation and change. This recommends a solid relationship between business change and innovation.
"A good number of people are employable if they are guided well. It is more of an attitude and will which is missing. The attitude to do things that will get things done has always been missing. The major issue has been on the soft skill part of it. Once we have the basics, the hard skills can be built. There are enough ecosystems available even after joining an organisation, in terms of internal training," said CEO at Upgrad, Arjun Mohan while talking about the problems of the education system, especially unemployability as a burning issue when it comes to the engineering domain.
Chincholikar highlighted the problem with the engineers from tier-2 and tier-3 colleges. He stated, "We are trying to prepare our engineers for a future that we don't know using technologies that have been used in the past and hoping that when they enter the workforce, they will be able to pick up and do things on their own. The purpose of technology is to essentially improve or solve something. So the question that we should try to answer is what's the problem that we need to solve. If we know this then technology becomes the strongest enabler."
Changing the curriculum of engineering colleges is a huge task. The CEO at Pietech Engineering Institute, Moulshree Dubey explained why this is a problem and how we deal with it. Dubey suggested, "There are two major aspects in an engineering college which a student has to do mandatorily, that is their internship programme and the assignments they take up. So that needs to be structured and changed in order to make it parallel with the current trends. Giving students a perspective as to what kind of job they are looking for and segregating them accordingly is also very important."
The experts also discussed the dual education program of Germany where students are enrolled into an industry as well as a classroom, so significant part of their time goes in industrial training and rest in the classroom and the difficulties in having such framework in India
Dilip Chenoy, Ex- Chairman, NSDC, Ex-SG-FICCI, EX- Chairman SL Institute of Engineering, described, "The challenge in the dual education system stems from the lack of mobility. Teachers can't move between academia & industry and come back. It's not there in the Indian system. Even in the New Education Policy, it's not there. So we need to bring that flexibility."
Dr Vijay Agrawal, Prof Incharge - Training & Placement, BIT-Patna, highlighted the issue of language for the students coming from rural background. He stated, "Because of the language barrier, many subjects are being introduced which are related to humanities and business communication skills have been introduced as a mandatory course now. In our institute, we have adopted communication skills as a compulsory paper in the first year." He also stressed on the needs for upskilling.
