Institute – Industry Gap – The Employability Gap

Knowing is not enough, we must apply Willing is not enough, we must do Abstract With the Industry and Academia often expressing divergent views, the article provides both with a platform for expression with the aim to help bring about a meeting of minds. Institute – Industry partnership forms an important activity for any academic institutions as its stakeholders interact with the real world. To work out this employability gap, it is essential for the institutes must realize that their ultimate goal is to deliver quality students to the industry. Covering up this employability gap won’t just benefit the student or the institute or the industry, but would overall benefit our nation as well. We have the fire in us; we just need to feel it and prove ourselves. Together we can and we will, make a difference!

Introduction: There was a time when underemployment of the educated masses was so prevalent in India; but today on the contrary, industries speak of not finding the employable work force. With the mushrooming of the educational institutes, every student has got an equal probable chance of pursuing the career of his interest. Even after having so many fresh graduates every year, still the industries are falling short of the right employees. What’s the reason behind this? The only answer is: The Employability Gap.
The questions that now arise are: Why does this employability gap exist? Who is to be blamed for it? What are the remedies for it?
With the mushrooming of the institutes, the opportunities are surely increasing for students, but the quality of graduates needed at the end of the day is degrading. The institutes typically believe in imparting bookish knowledge to the students; without giving any or little heed to the need of the industry. For the institutes, running a personality development class or a group discussion session is just not the part of the curriculum. They have least interest in grooming the students according to the industrial requirements and standards.




Student, Pioneer Institute of Professional Studies

 
2.    Industry Speaks out on Employability Gap: It is essential for the transformation of the higher education system interaction between Institutes and Industries will have great bearing on the curriculum of Higher education system. It will enable exposure of Industrial atmosphere to students and help them to perform effectively during employment in Industries. With the advent of Globalization and opening up of Indian economy to outside world, competition among Industries has become stiff. To attend to some of the issues and practical problems. Occurring in the industrial / business environment and also to improve their quality standard, industries started looking up to various venues to achieve their goals, of which approaching educational institutions seems to bring in long term effect. Besides, there is an urgent need to prepare students for job in multinationals companies by exposing them to new technologies and methodologies. These objectives can be achieved to a greater extent by bridging the gap between industries and academic institutes. The objective of any industry- institute partnership should be to bridge the gap between industry and the institution, by instituting a methodology which would act as an intermediary establishing a link between the same. These cells should mainly concentrate on:
•    Establishing link between institute and industry.
•    Utilizing and resources of the economy to the benefit of the industry and students.
•    Providing a platform for both industry and student community to exhibit their potential.
•    Forecast manpower requirements.
•    Update curriculum regularly to suit the requirement of both industry and students and the curriculum to include short term courses for manpower developments.
•    Impart training, carry on research and development to develop product, technology etc.
•    Arrange for in-plant training, industry based project work and industrial visits for the benefit of staff and students.

3.    Academia Speaks Out About Employability Gap: The Industry and market analysts have been talking about a growing supply-demand gap for employable persons. EE Times-India started by asking Industry and Academia if they indeed see a problem and to give their perspective from the trenches.
•    Rapid expansion of Educational Institutions is one of the reason of lack in quality education.
•    The IT revolution and the liberalization of economies around the world have led to globalization of the human resource pool for technology.
•    The need to innovate new technology in collaboration with the users of the technologies has changed the workforce needs of the business world, while the aptitude and talent of the future workforce have changed radically as a consequence of easy access to digital and communications technology.
•    Industry sponsored programmes should be available for the students to made them aware of the Industries.
4.    Industry – Academia Interaction
•    Access to modern equipments and facilities related to upcoming technologies.
•    Curriculum redesigned to suit the technological changes.
•    Co-operative research with enterprises.
•    Well-organized training programmes and collaborative projects.
•    Visiting faculties from the industrial sector.
•    Participation in seminars, conferences and workshops.
 
 
5.    Beneficiaries Through Above Relationship
•    The industry - Bridging of skills gap.
•    Companies - Increase in user-base of their products more certifications.
•    Students - Better job prospects in India and abroad.
•    Institutions - Make students saleable in the job market, between as attractive academic destination for future students.

6.    Causes For The Institute-Industry Gap: With the market fast paced growth fuelled by market need, we see a wide gap in the supply of quality manpower to meet demand.
•    The key reason for this being colleges emphasize very heavily on findings a job as opposed to learning. Tracking placement record for a college seems to be a key issue that gets tracked minutely.
•    The reasons for the gap are plentiful – graduates lacking hands on practical knowledge due to greater emphasis on theoretical learning, low academic research focus and patent filings in our colleges, absence of yearly scorecard on the universities to access the performance of universities on an overall basis and course basis which leads to sharp decline in quality, clear disconnect between what the industry wants and the curriculum, lack of finishing school for engineering graduates, best practices from one university currently is not replicated in the others , no common ground for professors to meet and exchange their views and ideas, companies not having a robust “campus connect” program. Companies trying to back-fill existing roles with fresh graduates and a lack of common body to govern faculty and to share best practices.

7.    Filling the Gap..........
•    With the gap widening and demand rising simultaneously, the need of the hour is to enable the graduates to be more employable along with promoting and supporting the creative mind is very important.
•    A feasible solution to reduce this gap is to get Industry, Academicians and Students onto the same platform.
o    To bridge the gap by bringing global Industry closer to the academia by providing Entrepreneurship Education, which helps train students for successful careers in the rapidly advancing technological world.
o    It hopes to be a catalyst for educational institutes to have a close Industry involvement through applied Research and Industry sponsored Internship.
o    High focus on both on employability and innovation.
o    The different activities in the platform include authoring text books, Creation of course material coupled with lectures and lab work and to teach management concepts to undergraduate and graduate management students through case studies for better connect from theoretical to apply in real life business situations. 

8.    Activities to be Performed by the Institutes:
•    To bridge this gap, academia needs to create partnership with corporate.
•    Giving exposure to Industry latest market trends.
•    Organizing seminars and workshops and Conducting industrial and technical exhibitions.
•    Arranging visits of staff members to various Industries in order to learn about the requirements of the Industries and teach their students accordingly.
•    To encourage industry and organizations for placement and training of students in industries
•    Widening and implementing research and development programmes, sponsored and joint research and development projects from industries in the institute.
•    To encourage industry to collaborate in industry study tour programme intern-ship programme.
•    Publishing and issuing technical bulletins / news letters and course material ith latest technological developments.
•    Organizing guest lectures on latest technological advancements evaluation of project work and workshops from Industrial experts in the Institute.

9.    Activities To Be Performed By The Industries And Government:
•    Governmental policies should be there to bring closer academia and industry to link universities to firms to utilize public knowledge for economic performance.
•    Government can make provisions for industrial visits for students in their organization.
•    Companies can send their representatives to colleges and institutes for guest lectures and seminars.
•    Industries should form collaborations with institutes in order to update the students with latest technologies used by them.
10.    Epilogue: From the aforesaid discussion, it is felt that, the focal point in the field of higher education is guaranteeing quality in the teaching- learning process, so as to impart best education  to the individual. This is possible only; the syllabi or curriculum should match on the requirement of industry. Hence, there is an urgent need for the academics to interact with the corporate institutions with regard to the ongoing developments taking place in the business sector. Based on this, academics should come forward to revise the curriculum according to the needs of the market.

11.    References:
1.    Newspaper- EE-Times India, ET- Article by Mr. Narayan Murthy
2.    Mr. Shivnanda Koteshwar- An Initiative to bridge the gap between Industry and Academia.
3.    www.articlebase.com