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Industry-Academia Collaboration: A critical need for upskilling future talent
Industry-Academia Collaboration: A critical need for upskilling future talent

November 21, 2022

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Today’s academia is struggling to adapt curricula to meet the emerging trends and needs of industry. A large percentage of talent from engineering colleges is deemed not to be employable. For example, a Global Skills Gap Report says 92% of employees in India they suffer from lack of industry work skills, and around two-thirds feel they have been personally impacted by such a gap.

In the era of digital transformation, there is a need for high levels of tech skills in the current and future workforce especially in new-age technologies like digital, cloud, cybersecurity, data management, etc. There is a great requirement of soft skills for effective collaboration. But however hard educational institutes try, technology will continue to outpace the institute’s ability to teach them to students.

Challenges in imparting employable skills

There are many reasons why educational institutes are falling short in training students in new-age skills worthy of industry employment:

  • Traditional focus on scoring high marks and not on hands-on skills and technology learning
  • Infrastructure gaps in institutes, including shortage of in-demand skills in students
  • Lack of appropriate knowledge among faculty due to low exposure in new-age skills
  • Absence of in-demand skills/courses by institutes
  • Lack of academia and industry linkages, leading to non-upgrades in curriculum

The need for early digital learning in students

In our post-pandemic times, the ability of the future workforce to expand their skillsets provides significant competitive advantage. Clearly, it is time for industry and academia to join hands. The following changes would help to align the present-day education with industry requirements.

  • Examination reforms – alignment of engineering education with global trends
  • Developing a model curriculum that can be extended to university requirements
  • Identification of areas of upgrading curriculum, such as AI, ML, IOT, Robotics, Cloud Computing, Data Analytics, AR, VR, Cybersecurity, etc.
  • Induction programs for students to enable early orientation to these subjects
  • Participation of students in hackathons conducted by industry
  • Mandatory and active internships in industry
  • Certification program by industry to train teachers on latest / emerging technologies
  • Compulsory MoUs between academic institutions with industry

A story of benefits … all around!

Each stakeholder – educational institutes, the industry, and students will benefit immensely from such an industry-academia project.

1. For institutes

  • Enhanced student placement
  • Improved University NIRF/ NAAC ranking
  • Branding and competitive market positioning
  • Faculty development
  • Enablement of faculty research and innovation opportunities
  • Investments aligned to technology trends and student quality
  • Ability to expand academic streams into newer areas with these industry participation

2. For industry

  • Availability of industry-ready talent pool
  • Improve deployment-ready, left-shift (sharing knowledge and making others self-reliant) of the trainings for productive employees
  • Niche skill identification and planning in advance
  • Loyalty and employee retention
  • Improved Employee Engagement in the organization
  • Opportunities for senior employees to teach / give back to society

3. For students

  • Learning of technology and skills aligned to career choices
  • Early and faster learning of industry-ready skills amongst peers
  • Early identification of skill gaps to correctly amend career choices
  • Exposure to industry experts and best practices of skills
  • Rounded skill development of both academics and hands-on expertise along with soft skills
  • Higher compensation

 

The future roadmap…

The current generation of youngsters is highly resourceful, given their capacity for quick, experiential learning. There should be ample opportunities for candidates to collaborate with industry experts. Similarly, organisations should realise that this is a ready pool of candidates they can train for future absorption in their respective organisations. The focus of the initiative will lead to enabling the remaining non-employable graduates (those 92% of the students as mentioned in the Global Skills gap report) to be industry ready and take advantage of the renaissance of industry demand and career options.

Only those that are tuned in to this will be on the roadmap of emerging market needs!

Conclusion…

It is imperative for organizations, educational institutions, and students to quickly adapt to the paradigm shifts in the industry. Convergence of these stakeholders will enable them to be future-ready, and to be ahead of the curve in servicing business needs.


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