The Hindu : AICTE assures support for industry-institute interaction

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 21, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

AICTE assures support for industry-institute interaction

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, MARCH 20. The All-India Council for Technical Education will provide support including funding for any structured effort at improving industry-institute interaction so that graduates become more employable, the AICTE southern regional council Chairman, M. Anandakrishnan, said today.

The AICTE was redrawing the undergraduate curriculum, which had for too long remained frozen in structure and content. "Happily this is changing and academic institutions are now looking for new dimensions and industry sees the need to make interaction with institutions more meaningful," he said inaugurating a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry-southern region (CII-SR).

Dr. Anandakrishnan said institute-industry interaction was now taking place in bits and pieces. This had to be consolidated. He proposed that the industry target about 5,000 second and third year students in 50 colleges in Tamil Nadu (which has 250 engineering colleges producing 50,000 graduates each year).

These students could be divided into five groups (according to discipline). The industry should "mentor them individually and as groups so that they regularly get exposure to the experiences of industry and its leaders for two years."

Industries and commercial enterprises should also provide in-house training modules to the students; or the colleges should procure the relevant modules from industry training facilities. This would help them become aware of what the industry looked for in recruits.

Finally, the curriculum should be made more flexible so that a student could, if required, work in an industry, instead of doing some courses in college, but still gain the required credits. "If this happens, the AICTE will be able to support not only financially but also provide moral support in getting accreditation or due recognition for allowing this flexibility."

The Chairman, CII national committee on higher education, S. Mahalingam (also chief financial officer of Tata Consultancy Services), called for more formal mechanisms that would strengthen industry-institute interaction. He said the "Silicon Valley model" of ideas being incubated in colleges and then commercialised by industry should be fostered in the country. On their part, the institutions should strengthen infrastructure and computing facilities and use the powerful medium of electronic learning to improve student capabilities.

At present, only one out of every 30 students was really employable by top-class companies.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu